A woman says she refused to give up her aisle seat on a 10-hour flight. Then a stranger allegedly cried for three hours to sit with her husband

Blogger Tomiko Harvey kept her aisle seat on a flight of about 10 hours while a fellow traveler allegedly wept for three hours. According to IBTimes UK, Harvey laid out her side in two Instagram videos. She is 55 and from Richmond, Virginia.

Harvey’s caption explains that she was returning from Kazakhstan on Turkish Airlines after her father’s death. She added that grief explains how worn she looks in the first clip. Her connecting leg between Istanbul and Washington, D.C., lasted more than 10 hours.

“I refused to give up my aisle seat because a lady missed her husband,” Harvey wrote in her first caption. A woman had asked her to hand over the aisle so the couple could sit side by side. In the follow-up video, she explained that she chose the aisle to avoid climbing past a neighbor on trips to the lavatory. She described the woman as seated in the neighboring middle seat, with the husband two rows ahead.

Harvey describes the rest of the flight

Harvey wrote that the woman “cried for 3 hours.” When Harvey asked if a death was behind the tears, the woman replied that nobody had died. She was missing her husband and wondered “whose shoulder would she lay her head on.” The husband, Harvey recalled, had headphones on in his middle seat, “sleeping in heavenly peace the entire flight.” Her caption explains that the woman wanted her to take his seat for the whole trip so she could rest against him. The trade would have put the husband in Harvey’s aisle spot.

After landing, Harvey told the woman, “Good job. Look at you surviving without your husband for 10 hours.” She added a joke that she needed to reevaluate her own marriage because she clearly did not love her husband enough. Harvey asked followers whether refusing a swap is rude and suggested that couples “book together or pay for seat selection.”

“I will die on this hill,” she told viewers in the second video, adding that the airline assigns seats and that travelers who prefer adjacent seats should purchase them. Cabin-space disputes also reach crew members, as when a Virgin Atlantic passenger confronted crew. The airline’s seat selection terms state that economy passengers on some fare packages pay for standard and preferred seats, while others receive them free.

Travelers who do not buy a seat are assigned one at online check-in, and paid selection opens as early as 355 days before departure. The terms add that seat selection cannot be guaranteed. The account reflects only Harvey’s side, and the three-hour figure comes from her own posts.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s family seating dashboard tracks whether airlines commit to seating children 13 or under next to an accompanying adult at no extra cost.