I’ve written in the past about airplane window shade etiquette, which basically boils down the person in the window seat having control of the window shade’s position, with some exceptions for courtesy. I’m curious about a variation on that question, and how others handle this, whether you’re an aviation geek or not.
Fully dark aircraft cabins drive me kind of bonkers
As a general rule of thumb, I select window seats whenever possible, and my preference is to have window shades open.
For one, I’m an aviation geek, so I love observing all phases of flight, the wing, the engine, etc. Beyond that, the world is beautiful, and I’ll never take the miracle of flight for granted, and how amazing the views are. There’s something so magical about looking out over the world, being 35,000 feet away from everyone else’s BS (well, maybe not so much anymore, due to the widespread availability of inflight Wi-Fi, but I digress).
However, there’s no denying that on many flights, virtually all window shades remain closed, despite it being a daytime flight. Sometimes it’s because the crew specifically asks passengers to lower the window shades out of respect for other passengers, so they can rest. Other times there just seems to be peer pressure, and some people do it, so then others follow.
As I see it, there are a couple of situations where it’s objectively appropriate for the crew to encourage people to close their window shades:
- If it’s a “redeye” flight despite it being light outside most of the way, like many flights from Asia to the US that depart in the early morning, and then it’s only briefly dark, before being light the rest of the way
- If it’s a flight where it’s dark outside, but the sunrise will catch people off guard, when they’d otherwise be sleeping
However, what I’m less a fan of is the trend of virtually all window shades being closed on your run-of-the-mill daytime flights, especially those that aren’t long hauls.
For example, several weeks ago I took the five-hour flight from Miami to Salt Lake City, departing around 9AM. I understand others want to get some rest on that flight, but I kind of hate sitting in darkness for that many hours when I’m wide awake, and had a good night of sleep. I just want to gaze out the window and watch the world go by! Should the desire of other people to sleep on a daytime flight supersede my desire to look out the window?
How do you balance your preferences with those of others?
All of this brings me to my question — in situations where passengers decide amongst themselves that it’s going to be a “dark cabin,” do you just automatically go along with that, or how and where do you draw the line?
Assuming it’s a flight where I don’t think it’s inappropriate to keep window shades open, my thoughts on this are twofold. First of all, if I notice all window shades are closed at the beginning of the flight, I’ll open “my” shades early, in hopes of starting a trend, and making others not feel peer pressured into keeping them closed.
Beyond that, during the flight, my take is that if any other people have their window shades open, I’m happy to open mine as well. Meanwhile if literally every window shade is closed, then I won’t do that, because I know how blinding that can be. The below social media post from some time ago is a funny example of that. Though I will say, I’d make an exception if we were over Greenland and there were amazing views, or something like that.
Bottom line
I’m always amazed by how on so many daytime flights, the cabin stays dark the entire time, with virtually no one opening their window shades. I can sort of understand that for long haul travel, but for short and medium haul travel, it confuses the heck out of me.
Ultimately I’m not here to judge the choices of others, though I always struggle with looking out the window when I’m seemingly the only one who is interested in doing so. It’s almost blinding when you have a completely dark cabin and then one person opens their window shade. At the same time, if one person opens it, then maybe a trend can be started.
Anyone else not love the trend of totally dark cabins on so many flights? And if you’re a fellow window seat passenger who likes looking outside, what’s your approach?
