She did what?
While many flyers blatantly ignore airplane etiquette — like eating a smelly snack or elbowing your seatmate — one traveler took things a little too far with her bizarre stretching method that had many giving her the side eye.
Stuck on a 12-hour economy flight from Paris, France, to California and thankfully in a window seat next to her husband, McKailey Fast, a 29-year-old content creator and Pilates instructor, recently went viral for posting a TikTok video, with over 1 million views, that featured her stretching her legs on the wall of the plane.
Couldn’t she just get up and walk the aisle to get the blood flowing?
Fast told Newsweek that she held the uncustomary position “for a brief moment to stretch (her) legs and assist with lymphatic drainage,” adding that her tailbone was hurting her “quite badly.”
Fast shared that she filmed the TikTok during a 12-hour September flight from Paris, France, to California, during which she sat next to her husband and had forgotten compression socks.
She emphasized to Newsweek that she did not disturb other passengers, adding that “the flight attendant actually noted it looked like a great idea.”
While this positive attitude may have been the attitude of Fast’s flight attendant, it was not the consensus of her millions of viewers — and probably her fellow flyers.
Several commented on the vid expressing their distaste and even disgust for the unusual seating position, “Girl (get) your feet off the damn wall ffs.”
“Our ancestors on boats for months are rolling in their graves,” added another.
Others, however, saw nothing alarming about Fast’s stretching position of choice.
“I genuinely do not see a problem with this,” commented @nishith_rrr.
“As someone who (flies) all the time this is literally so fine,” wrote a commenter. “It’s uncomfy, if you can find a way to bring some comfort I’m happy for you. Y’all need to stop being so afraid of feet.”
Travel expert and View From the Wing blogger Gary Leff holds the view that making it work in terms of airplane travel seating positions “needs to be within the bounds of odor and disruption.”
He also emphasized that travelers “at a minimum” should “stay inside their footprint” (a.k.a., keep legs, feet, and gear inside one’s personal space), “not make direct contact with shared surfaces where people eat,” and “keep it short” (“it” being the chance to stretch).
“If she was bothering anyone it’s her husband and, well, he married her,” Leff conceded in his post on the issue.
Fast’s foot position hasn’t been the only unconventional airplane movement of choice lately. In multiple viral TikToks, flight attendants have been seen holding impromptu “airplane yoga” sessions for passengers while in flight.
The reasons for the fun in-sky exercise range from a sneaky ploy for passengers to clean up around their seats to a way to prevent health issues that can stem from remaining sedentary for too long.
In the former Post story on the subject, NYC physical therapist Dr. Karena Wu suggested that travelers “stand up every hour to stretch their legs and decompress the spine a bit.”
“The aisles of the plane are tight but any standing-in-place exercise can be done without bothering your plane mates too much,” Wu explained.
“Calf raises activate the calf muscles to help use them as a pump with venous returns to the heart. Standing backbends help to reverse the curve in the low back and stretch the hips open.”
