Viral TikTok shows airplane passengers in seats that face each other

• TikToker Megan Homme posted a clip showing her seating arrangement on a regional Swedish airline.
• The now-viral video shows Homme seated facing other passengers, their legs nearly touching.
• Commenters were baffled by the seating arrangement, with some calling it a “living hell.”

There are certain things that passengers have come to expect while traveling by plane: long security lines, a small treat after takeoff (if you’re lucky), and seats that face forward. 

One influencer’s viral TikTok, however, has flipped that expectation on its head, showing passengers sitting face-to-face, an arrangement more commonly seen on trains. 

“I’ve never seen this on a flight before,” text on the video reads. “Seats facing each other??”

TikToker Megan Homme said she encountered the backwards seats on a regional airline in Sweden. Homme did not respond to Insider’s request for comment about which airline she was flying or to find out more about her flight experience. The video, posted July 13, has accumulated 7.4 million views — and thousands of comments calling out the bizarre seat structure.

“Absolutely not. Full refund,” one of the top-liked comments said. Some viewers said they wouldn’t know where to look and would feel uncomfortable facing another passenger for the entirety of a flight.

“That’s too much looking time for me,” another person wrote.

While the TikToker did not reveal which airline she was flying, it appears to be a Braathens Regional Airline plane, also known as BRA. Insider reached out to the company to see if this was indeed their plane, and if the seating arrangement was common, but did not hear back.

It’s not the first time the internet has been set ablaze by rear-facing airline seats. In 2015, Zodiac Seats France, an airplane seat manufacturer, patented a plan for a similar configuration — and news outlets simply were not having it.

Wired called the patent “a new form of hell” and “the most nightmarish idea for plane seating ever,” while Conde Nast Traveler declared that the arrangement “will haunt you forever.”

While rear-facing seats may be an oddity today, Southwest Airlines had a similar seating structure for more than 30 years, according to its website.

Called “lounge seating,” the inward-facing seats were ideal for families or passengers conducting mid-air business meetings — and were “considered the most sought-after, or avoided, seats on the plane,” a Southwest blog post stated.

The seats gradually disappeared starting in 1997, when the company transitioned to the front-facing seating arrangements passengers know today. According to Southwest, the reconfiguration was “primarily due to new Safety guidelines as well as advancements in technology.”