The Gray Area between Rights and Fairness

The overhead lights dim, and I have to turn on the little reading light above my seat to be able to continue to work on my reflection journal. The goal is to stay awake for the entirety of the flight, since I’d be arriving in Newark at night, and it would help with the jet lag adjustment to go straight to bed. The plane starts taxiing towards the runway, leaving the large building of the Istanbul airport behind. The “stress release” background sounds of my Endel app are not very conducive to keeping me awake, but they at least help to drown out all the other noise around me.

I look down at my laptop with the reflection journal patiently awaiting my answers. Let’s see what the next prompt is. What were my moments of appreciation and gratitude during 2025? Okay, that should be easy. I raise my eyes to look at the little screen embedded in the back of the seat in front of me with the flight details and my seat information. 37C. Well, it’s not 37A, the window seat, but it’s also not 37D, the middle seat. On this flight, with the rows arranged in two-four-two, 37C, just like 37B, is an aisle seat, and for that I’m grateful.

A tiny part of my mind remarks begrudgingly that most people around me are asleep, especially those in the A-row window seats. I tiredly ignore it. Another part of my mind stirs up. I don’t want to attend to it because I know it’s just happy to be distracted by anything, and I’m trying to focus here. But eventually, I let it direct some of my attention to the sounds of commotion somewhere behind me. I’m not even sure if it’s the sounds that attracted me or if it’s the stares of blatant curiosity that more and more of the awake passengers around me seem to be directing to the source of the sounds in the back of the plane. Not that there’s much of the plane left to be behind my 37th row. Finally, I take one AirPod out.

“No, this is illegal! We paid for those seats and you changed them and gave us these instead! This is illegal! You’re all shady here! I’m a lawyer - show me, show me where it says that you can do this! Yes, I will be recording you because this is ridiculous!”

I put the AirPod back in. Mmm, I really don’t need this. Or rather, I try to pretend that I’m above the “peasant” curiosity and will not be another fly attracted to the stench of a blooming scandal equivalent of Titan Arum. I’m pretty sure my mind makes a mental equivalent of a smirk at the pretentiousness of the reference - after all, I only recently learned about the curious flower, also known as Corpse Lily - but I shrug it off - how else am I supposed to keep my mind from succumbing to dullness if not by stretching my mental references beyond what AI can predict-type in a message?! I manage to focus for a bit to get a few thoughts down in the reflection journal, when the plane comes to a halt. It usually does that right before speeding up for the takeoff, but I have a funny feeling that it’s something else because as I look around me, I can see quite an attentive audience for the little scene taking place in the back. An announcement assaults my ears through the AirPods.

“We’ll be taking the plane back to address technical matters.”

I almost growl - after my 12 hour layover, I just want this 11 hour flight to finally begin, so it can finally end. I look around me again, sighing and taking both AirPods out. Technical matters my ass.

I finally look back and over to my right to take in the full view of the Corpse Lily argument. It happens to involve three flight attendants and a familiar couple somewhere around row 42. I mentally correct myself - they are not a familiar couple to me exactly, I just remember looking at them in the boarding line because they stared so affectionately in each others’ faces and cooed at and over each other that it made me wonder how nice it would be to have someone with whom I too could be all cute and excited in face of an 11 hour flight. I think I subconsciously singled them out as someone who would definitely enjoy this flight. Mmm, I didn’t jinx them, did I? Oh, the power the mind likes to pretend it has!

“Ma’am, please stop recording and delete the video.”

“I have a right to record and I will use this as evidence. I’ll show everyone how shady you all are here!”

I feel my eyebrows rise a bit before I even realize what it is I am reacting to. Ah right, the flight attendants don’t have much to do with the seating decisions, so it’s not really fair that they become the face of the problem when they only relate to it by association, or by the matter of their employment. So I guess my raised eyebrows are just me siding for a moment there with the exasperated flight attendants.

By now, a good number of passengers are on their feet, some have their phones out, undoubtedly taking video of the developing story as well. A baby is crying in the background. More than the baby itself, I get distracted by the thought that crying babies and planes tend to go hand in hand — I don’t think I’ve ever been on a plane that didn’t have crying babies — and yet, it would be a stretch to claim any kind of relationship between those two variables. I shake my head. The heck am I thinking about? I direct my attention back to the argument, just as the plane starts moving back to the airport.

Based on what I’m able to gather, which is surprisingly a lot because both parties seem to be of the conviction that repeating their grievances, demands, explanations, and occasional hints at threats and insults should eventually result in something other than the deadlock of a dance they are in now, apparently, the couple paid for premium economy seats but at the gate was told they would have different seats, no explanation given. As they got on the plane, the “different” seats turned out to be not just regular but basic economy seats, which made them obviously unhappy, since it did not sound like they were getting reimbursed for the downgrade either. The flight attendants (unsurprisingly?) couldn’t explain what happened and why or give any reassurances about reimbursement. The couple demanded answers, and the flight attendants just apologized and kept on not providing any helpful information (since they probably didn’t have it?).

What is semi-amusing is that I almost experienced the opposite of this couple’s situation on my previous flight. When flying to Istanbul, I was flying with my little sister, who I then put on a connecting flight to Chicago. As we got to the gate and it was our turn to board, the gate attendant said there was a change, took my sister’s boarding pass, gave her a new on, and smiled as he added, “We upgraded you to business class!” (It turned out that my sister had collected enough points for some sort of a status with the airline, so she was at the top of their list for any possible upgrades. As for me, let’s just say I’m not very good with tracking these point-things.) My sister looked at me and shook her head, “I want to sit with you.” I might have melted there a little, but I still tried to make sure my sissy actually thought about it, “You sure? It’s okay if you would like to sit in business.” She shook her head again, “After this flight, I won’t see you for a while, so I’m not going to not spend time with you while I can.” She almost hugged me at those words (she stopped being a hugger a few years ago, so this “almost” was kind of a big deal). I then explained to the gate attendant that she would like to keep her original seat. He was very confused, surprised, and also perplexed, since apparently they had already reassigned her seat to someone else and that person was already occupying it on the plane. “We’ll see what we can do,” he said, asking us to wait nearby till everyone else boards. My sister shared an obvious suggestion, “Just give that person my seat in the business class, I doubt they would mind.” Well, they, or rather he, really did not mind. He wasn’t exactly explained anything, just told that he was upgraded, and boy, did he look thrilled (“and cute,” commented my sister, while making suggestive eyes at me, “maybe I should have taken the business class seat, so you’d seat next to him!”). Anyways, this is all to say that I was a bit primed by this recent experience of random seat changes and the cumbersomeness of getting them back even when it’s swapping for a downgrade.

Another experience that I knew was priming my reaction to the situation at hand was from over a decade ago, when a gate attendant decided to check the weight of my carry-on and then requested that I check it in (and pay for it too) because it was twice the allowable weight. I was so upset with him that I quickly discarded politeness and fully embodied a resentful and rude attitude. As my sister would say now, my face had PG16 subtitles. I was fortunate to have my younger brother there with me because he pulled me aside with a look that expressed second-hand embarrassment (and I could tell that it was my behavior that he found embarrassing). In an uncharacteristically mature tone, he reprimanded me, “Calm down, you’re being unfairly disrespectful - he’s just doing his job. He shouldn’t have to take the heat for having to enforce policies of the company he works for. He didn’t write them and he doesn’t have the flexibility to change them. So chill, will you?” I wanted to argue that of course he had some flexibility, he was just choosing to not exercise it, but it also immediately became obvious that my behavior absolutely did not inspire any desire or openness for exercising such flexibility. I really was unfairly disrespectful to another person only because I didn’t get some special treatment while blatantly breaking the carry-on weight allowance rules. Needless to say, it turned into a lasting lesson, and my brother’s voice lives in my head as an occasional humanity check in emotional situations involving other people.

By the time I sift through all these memories and thoughts, the plane is back at the gate. A bunch of people in neon vests rush in and loom over the couple in question and a number of other passengers. One of these passengers is right behind me, so I can hear very clearly when a man in the neon vest demands in a low authoritative voice, “Sir, delete the video you took. Do it now. In front of me.”

What in the hell?

I see this same question in the eyes of other passengers in the vicinity as they are realizing the objective of our return to the gate and the agenda pursued by the men in the vests.

The passenger behind me, a guy, tries to push back, his voice failing to hide the shook uncertainty, “I have a right to record whatever I want. You can’t force me to delete anything on my personal device…”

(I almost hear the thoughts of the crew members standing expectantly nearby, “A right? What an American thing to say! What about our rights to not be recorded without our consent?”)

The voice of the man in the vest is a paragon of confidence, “Sir, the plane will not move until everyone deleted the videos they took. If you refuse, we’ll have to ask you to leave the plane.”

I feel my eyebrows make their way back up to the middle of my forehead. Mmm… Okay, forget fairness, now I just want to fact-check this thing. Who has what rights here? I pull out my phone. Carefully, to not create any false impressions of secretly recording or whatever else, I open ChatGPT and ask Amadeus (yes, it has a name) for clarity under the provided facts. (The next two paragraphs are my attempts at maintaining my writing integrity through paraphrasing while relying on Amadeus to help make sense of the legal matters in questions, since I’m very much not a lawyer)

So. Under Turkish law (KVKK Law No. 6698), recording identifiable individuals can constitute processing of personal data, yet courts and legal commentary do generally allow for certain defensibility of documentation of a public dispute. Recording airline staff is not inherently unlawful in a public, operational setting, yet an aircraft cabin is also a private, regulated space governed by airline contracts that give crews broad power to enforce compliance, including denying carriage or removing passengers who refuse instructions prior to departure and delaying or canceling the flight for “operational reasons.” These powers come from conditions of carriage, aviation safety norms, and captain’s ultimate authority over who flies. So even if the recording was lawful, refusal to comply with a crew instruction can still be treated as noncompliance under airline policy. At the same time, airline employees and ground staff do not have authority to seize/access personal devices or compel/coerce deletion of recordings.

The passenger behind me wasn’t wrong in principle, but he was invoking a U.S.-style rights framework (U.S. law here is largely irrelevant until airborne or unless U.S. authorities are involved) in a Turkish jurisdiction on private property before takeoff (Turkish law is in effect while on the ground). So with the passenger appealing to abstract rights, and the staff appealing to operational authority, neither was actually speaking the same legal language. The incident grew out of a clash between law, contract, norms, expectations, and authority. In the end, while law outranks policy, policy often outranks the practical leverage in the moment - meaning a passenger may be legally within their rights to record, yet still face contractual consequences for refusing a crew instruction.

Eventually, all videos are deleted (no passenger was removed from the flight), the neon vests leave the plane, and we go back to the runway some 3 hours later than originally scheduled. I do end up falling asleep on the plane, my jet lag management strategy thwarted, but at least no further incidents disrupt the trip.

Anyways, that’s my story. Has something like this happened to you? What other perspectives am I missing/overlooking?

The airlines that have been known for similar incidents include: Porter airlines, Lufthansa, American Airlines, Delta, WestJet, Swiss International, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, British Airways, Air Canada (and now also Turkish airlines).

P.S. Some practical guidance from Amadeus if this happens to you:

• Do not argue on the safety merits mid-flight. Calmly de-escalate.

• If asked to delete, you can say: “I understand your request; I don’t consent to deleting. I’m happy to stop recording now.”

• If they insist, ask for a supervisor and ask for the instruction in writing or note names/badge numbers.

• If you feel pressured, stop recording (to avoid escalation), but do not unlock your phone and hand it over.

• (My five cents - if really necessary, consider doing a live video or sending it immediately through Telegram/WhatsApp, but also please be mindful of unfairly subjecting to online harassment identifiable individuals in the video that aren’t actually responsible for the situation at hand.)

Afterward, use formal channels:

• Airline complaint + airport authority complaint.

• In the U.S., DOT consumer complaint may be appropriate depending on facts; TSA complaints if checkpoint-related. (TSA’s published stance on filming helps.)

• In Türkiye, if the conflict is about publication/data processing, consider KVKK concepts and formal complaint routes if applicable.