A COUPLE has been slammed online after they posted a video blocking an empty middle seat on a flight before offering up the spare chair to the 'right' passenger.
On Instagram, Jeff Martin posted a video of the "hack" used by him and his wife on Southwest Airlines flights.
He wrote across the video: "Southwest flight. We took the aisle and window until we found the right person."
The footage then showed Martin's wife scoping out other passengers who are walking down the aisle.
When a man wearing headphones stopped next to Martin's wife, she said: "Should I be nice right?".
She then taps the man on the shoulder and offers him the aisle seat and then moves into the middle seat.
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Martin said: "She was just looking for somebody coo to scoot over."
The clip has been liked over 1,000 times.
It's racked up more than 400 comments with many people calling the couple "tacky".
Other Instagram users labelled the couple's behaviour as "discriminatory" and questioned the duo's rationale behind picking a fellow passenger.
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One person wrote:"The fact that people do stuff like this doesn’t surprise me, it's the fact that people are not ashamed, but advertise that they do this is what floors me.
"You paid for two seats. You have no right over any of the other seats."
Other users revealed how they've used similar tactics on flights too: "We do this every time we fly.
"I sit in the aisle seat while my wife takes the window leaving the middle seat open with something sitting on it, and when the perfect seatmate approaches, we offer her the window and my wife slides over to the middle."
Many users also blamed the airline's seating policy.
The American airline has an "open seating" policy, which means that passengers aren't assigned seats before boarding the flight.
Instead, holidaymakers who are travelling with the airline are given a boarding group (A, B, C) and a boarding position (1 to 60), which decides when they board.
This isn't the first time passengers have argued about empty seats on a plane.
Other disagreements have been caused by armrests, seats being reclined too far back and other selfish behaviour.
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