27 February 2024 , 13:39
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Caroline Stanbury and husband Sergio Carrallo got a little more than they bargained for when they booked the ‘best seats’ on the plane for a recent trip. The Real Madrid Footballer and Real Housewives of Dubai star took to TikTok to showcase the unfortunate seating arrangement that saw the couple look visibly ‘mortified’, with the clip of their in-flight fright amassing almost 20 million views in a matter of days.
With Carallo and Stanbury, quite literally, faced with an embarrassing situation, he explained in the clip that their assistant had “booked 1A and 1B” on the undisclosed flight, leading the celebrity couple to believe they had “the best seats on the plane.”
However when they took to their seats, the high-profile pair quickly realised there was no one behind them, with their seats against the bulkhead preventing them from reclining during the clip: “We got the best seats in the plane,” jokes Carrallo: “Nothing goes back.”
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However that was just the start of their plane pain, as his video pans to the rest of the aircraft, showing the bemused couple facing the entire cabin of other passengers, in two ‘aft-facing' seats, more usually reserved for cabin crew.
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With both the couple and passengers looking visibly shocked in the clip, social media went wild with the awkward arrangement. One exclaimed: “Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the camera flip,” while another said: “At this point I’d have to stare them down to assert dominance.” One said with horror: “Imagine you are an introvert and get those seats!”
“The fact that everyone is staring I can’t,” exclaimed one mortified commenter, while another wrote, “Staring the entire plane down is crazy.” One viewer said it looked like they were conducting a Q&A session at 30,000 feet, while another, clearly horrified, wrote: “There’s my absolute worst nightmare and then there’s this. Why do those seats even exist?!” inquired one, to which Carrallo replied, “Tell me about it.”
However aft- or forward-facing airline seats are used in most airlines, including United Airlines and British Airways, and according to online travel site, The Points Guy, many airlines install them as they can squeeze more of them into the business class cabin to maximise space over privacy. The seats are also deemed safer, lessening the impact on the body on landing, or in an emergency (a reason infants are encouraged to stay in backward-facing car seats for as long as possible according to simpleflying.com ).
Richard Snyder, a former University of Michigan transportation safety researcher, was quoted in Smithsonian magazine that crash protection afforded by aft-facing seats is: “Supported by over half a century of experience.” The article referenced a 1952 edition of Naval Aviation News, which explained that: “Passengers in Navy transport planes have ten-fold better chances of coming out of crashes alive, thanks to backward-facing seats.”