‘Hero’ plane passenger confronts fellow traveller for fatphobic comment

The incident happened when she asked for a seatbelt extender

It’s been called ‘horrid behaviour’ (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A woman is being hailed a “hero” for confronting a fellow plane passenger when she saw the traveller texting a friend calling her “fat”.

In the first TikTok post about the incident, passenger @ohmikayousofine shared a video of a traveller sitting beside her, who is seemingly looking down at her phone.

Mika, addresses the passenger (who she calls Cathy), writing: “To my in-flight seat buddy Cathy who decided to text her friends about ‘sitting next to a fat-ass OMG’ on my BHM-ORD flight: make sure you turn your brightness and font down next time.”

In a subsequent video, Mika speaks to the screen and explains she was sitting next to Cathy when she spotted the woman’s lit-up phone screen. Mika then claims she said to her in-flight neighbour: “If you’re gonna call somebody fat sitting right next to you, you could at least turn your brightness down.”

“She looked at me and said, ‘you weren’t supposed to see that’,” Mika continues in the video, adding that she replied: “I was like, well, you didn’t make it very unobvious.”

Mika claimed the incident occurred at around the same time that she asked a flight attendant for a seatbelt extender.

“Also shameless plug, never be afraid to ask for a seatbelt extender. If you need one, you need one,” Mika adds.

Mika told the flight attendant that the lady sitting next to her had called her fat.

According to the TikTok video, the flight attendant swiftly apologised for Mika’s experience, who replied: “Some people just have the audacity.”

Crew offered Mika the option to move seats, but she decided to stay put; her story prompted widespread praise in the comments section.

Social media users were quick to call Mika “awesome”, “a queen” and a “hero”, with one person posting: “Yess! I admire your confidence. We need to start calling out people’s horrid behaviour.”