Woman notices elderly passenger being harassed to switch seats — so she stepped in to protect her

Depending on where you are sitting on a flight, your air travel can either become a splendid experience or a pure nightmare. It even gets worse if another passenger asks you to switch seats with them. On one of her flight journies, a woman named Cristina Yang (@not.cristinayang on TikTok) came across a fellow traveler who became the cause of a mid-air headache for Yang. So she took drastic yet hilarious measures to keep the elderly woman next to her from having to relocate and it has the internet cheering for her.

Yang narrated in her video about how she was on a Seattle-bound flight from Hawaii and had paid an extra fare to secure herself a Premium Economy window seat, which comes with perks like extra legroom and unlimited drinks and snacks. She had a polite old Japanese woman sitting in the middle and another passenger in the aisle seat. However, the woman in the aisle seat was traveling with her friend, who was at the back of the plane in aisle number 26 and she wanted the Japanese woman to switch seats with her buddy.

But this wouldn't have been a fair trade for the Japanese lady since you could "smell the toilet at the back" and when the Japanese woman was about to move, Yang had to intervene and throw in an effective lie to help her seatmate. Yang—who is Chinese-American—claimed to the lady in the aisle seat that she and the Japanese woman were traveling together and they were not interested in sitting separately. "Hello, we're both Asian, obviously, we know each other!" she joked.

"Sit down, Connie," Yang told the confused Japanese lady, pretending to be her kin. The aisle passenger didn't buy her lie at first, so Yang had another trick up her sleeve. She started speaking to the Japanese lady in Cantonese. Even though the elderly lady didn't understand a word of Cantonese, she started talking back to Yang in Japanese after understanding that Yang was trying to help her.

As expected, the woman demanding the seat change couldn't tell the difference between the two languages and fell for the act. "I look up at the lady who was still standing there and I go, 'Okay, we are going to continue to talk about you in our language, so why don't you go back to row 26, where you belong.' If you wanted to sit next to your friend, you should have booked a ticket next to her, not 20 rows behind!" Yang concluded.

Folks on TikTok were well-entertained by the events narrated by Yang and most of them spoke about how "Connie" would've returned home with an interesting memory from the flight. @sfoss33 wrote: "It’s like when you get to a movie early to get good seats and the people want you to just move down one seat. Nope!" @nunya joked: "She’ll remember you for the rest of her life. It’ll be a story every Christmas or whatever holiday is big in Japan." @chichagoprgirl75 quipped: "May your coffee always be hot, green lights on your drives and close parking spots in the parking lot." @hipsterwriter commented: "I cannot imagine asking someone to switch for a better seat in my favor. What is wrong with people?"

This article originally appeared 1 year ago.