Because your seat reclines into the space of the seat behind you. Airline seats are very, very close together, often only 14 inches of space. If you take up 3 of those inches by reclining your seat it makes evacuation for the people in the row behind you slower in the unlikely event of an emergency. But, since those emergencies can be super dangerous and slowing the evacuation could kill people, you’re not allowed to recline your seat when the plane is close to the ground and the warning time of an emergency might be very short.
If you’re referring to how flight attendants ask you not to recline seats: keep in mind that if an emergency requires an evacuation of the plans, you probably want to get off the plane ASAP. *Anything* that causes any delay could mean a loss of one or more lives.
Seconds matter when getting out of and away from a hollow metal tube full of jet fuel that might have a risk of igniting.
Accidents are far more likely on takeoff and landing. When this happens the passengers are hopefully going to be able to evacuate, and it would really be great if people aren’t blocked into their seats because someone wanted to recline. In that case inches really do matter. Another issue is that if the airplane is coming to a sudden stop the passengers can be thrown forward (you don’t have a shoulder strap, remember?) and if the person in front of you has their seat back in your face you will have a bad time.
With all of that to consider, instructing passengers to bring their seats fully upright isn’t that big an ask.
My pregnant wife and I flew to Europe last month. She was 5 months pregnant and showing a little bit. When we are at cruise and the person in front of us was fully reclined, she couldn’t get out of her seat without my help. Imagine that scenario if there were to be an accident on take-off or landing which required rapid evacuation from the aircraft.
[Before anybody asks, yes, she was totally OK to fly both from a medical perspective and an airline policy perspective.]
Take off and landing are the two parts of a flight where there’s a chance that you’d need to get out of the plane in an emergency.
Tilting your seat back pushes it into the space behind, which makes it harder for the people behind you to get out. Just a few inches can make a huge difference in how hard it is to get out, and it also brings the back of the seat closer to a person’s face so they are more likely to smash their face into it if the plane suddenly stops.
In an emergency, you want to get everyone out as fast as possible in case of a fire, so making sure that they are aware and there’s the most space possible for them to get out of their seat is important.
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