Tempers flare as legroom in planes shrinks

[NEW YORK] Flying coach can be a bruising experience these days.

Rory Rowland said he was rudely rebuffed after he asked the person in front of him not to recline his seat on a red-eye flight. When he later got up to use the bathroom, and the other passenger had fallen asleep, "I hip-checked his seat like you wouldn't believe," Mr Rowland, a speaker and consultant, said, then feigned innocence when the enraged passenger complained to a flight attendant.

With air travellers increasingly feeling like packed sardines, flying has become a contact sport, nowhere more than over the reclined seat.