Karen on Plane Hits Woman's Leg With Her Seat for an Entire 5-Hour Flight

Flying is already stressful enough on its own. You have to arrive at the airport several hours ahead of schedule just to compensate for the security that you'll have to sift through before even getting to your gate. Then you'll have to wait several more hours just to be boarded, and you'd be considered lucky if your gate doesn't change more than twice. And unfortunately, things may not get may not get much better when you're in the air.

Whether you're a nervous flyer or someone else on the plane (usually a child) is making a fuss, there are all kinds of stressors that can bother folks when you're flying in an airplane. However, Sarah Frank on TikTok (@sarah.frank) probably had it worse than most on her flight after a Karen kept hitting her legs with her seat for an entire five-hour flight. She shared her ordeal in a video.

Sarah's TikTok, which was posted in late October 2023, may have only been 53 seconds. However, her ordeal with the Karen on the same United Airlines flight as her practically lasted for her entire plane ride.

In her video, Sarah spoke about the woman sitting in front of her who kept hitting her legs whenever she reclined her seat.

"The lady sitting in front of me on my United flight kept ramming her seat back into my legs," Sarah wrote in her video. She even had video proof of the Karen having reclined her seat so far back that Sarah was basically stuck in place and couldn't move.

To make matters worse, the Karen wasn't exactly being reasonable about it either. Otherwise, she wouldn't be a Karen. When Sarah tried bringing it up, the Karen got the flight attendants involved and nearly made a whole scene about it.

According to Sarah, she offered to switch seats with the Karen so that she could recline without, y'know, hitting another passenger? But the other woman refused to be "inconvenienced" by sitting in what would be an identical seat to her seat at the time.

"Even after the 15 minute conversation [we had], she continued pushing her seat back into me." At that point, the Karen was probably just being petty as Karens often are. Sarah even claimed to have had gotten bruises the next day.

It's one thing if children become unruly on a plane. Even if they start misbehaving and causing a ruckus during a flight, they can't always understand how to behave during a plane ride and sometimes just can't help themselves.

But when a full-grown adult can't be bothered to make tiny adjustments to respect someone's personal space when dozens of strangers are already crammed too close as it is, they must have a serious chip on their shoulder. I'd rather have to put up with a child on a plane who can't always listen than with an entitled adult who actively won't listen.

In a cute little follow-up TikTok, Sarah suggested that people invest in knee pads when flying in case the passenger in front of you "has it out for your knees."