reclining

On an aircraft or bus, people often feel unsure whether to put their seat back or not. If it's night-time, it seems reasonable to slightly inconvenience the person behind since, after all, they're likely to want to sleep and hence to put their seat back and inconvenience the person behind them. During the day, things become less clear. Given that the person behind you is likely to have their seat up, is it fair to recline your seat? Of course, ideally seats would have enough space between them for this not to be an issue. And you may argue that, whatever, you should feel free to recline your seat -- after all, you've paid your flight and this is part of the deal. But how about this: when you check in at the airport, or when you buy your coach ticket, you indicate whether you'd like "reclining" or "non-reclining". If you opt for "reclining", you will be seated behind another "recliner". You needn't think twice about putting your seat back, but likewise the person in front knows that s/he needn't think twice about putting their seat back. If, however, you opt to be a "non-recliner", you can be assured that there will be a "non-recliner" in front of you. Finer details are easy to sort out. For instance, if the seats at the back of the cabin don't recline, then you can't have a whole line of "recliners" going all the way down the cabin. In that instance, you might choose to offer a "non-recliner-yet-reclined-to" ticket, whereby a traveller will get a slight discount for being in a situation where he can't recline but the person in front of him can. Likewise, if the disparity between "recliners" and "non-recliners" is such that the layout of the cabin makes things hard to arrange, more "non recliners" can be offered the option of a discount to become "non-recliners-yet-reclined-to". There would be various ways to fund the difference -- one would be that all "recliners" pay a little more for their tickets, which would then be used to pay off "non-recliners-but-reclined-to". Others could be lottery-based.