Woman goes viral after refusing to give up first class seat to kid

Their inability to plan was totally not her emergency.

A traveler is being lauded online for her response to a mother who tried to take away her dream seat in first class — just so she could sit closer to her teen.

Sabra, a Seattle pharmacist and influencer who posts on TikTok as @lifewithdrsabra, posted a short clip from a recent Air France flight from the Pacific Northwest to Paris, detailing the situation and how she dealt with it.

The 6-second video, captioned “POV: Flight agent asks me if I want to give up my 1A seat so a child sits with their family,” shows her lounging on her first class seat, while a popular TikTok audio drop — “Girl, f – – k them kids and f – – k you too” — plays in the background.

“That’s a no from me dawg,” Sabra wrote in the caption with a laughing emoji, asking her followers: “Would you have given up your seat?”

The clip has been viewed over 9 million times, with many people — parents included — agreeing she shouldn’t have been expected to move. Many applauded her for standing her ground.


Sabra was applauded for standing her ground.
Sabra was applauded for standing her ground.
lifewithdrsabra/TikTok

“Why isn’t their first instinct is to just switch the child with one of her parents so they could be with a guardian… lmao,” one skeptic TikToker asked.

“Nope, cause, as a mom, it’s a parents responsibility to plan ahead,” added another. “Just traveled to Europe for 1.5 months with my toddler and no one had to move.”


Screenshot of woman in first class seat.
A Seattle woman has gone viral for her response to a request to swap seats on a recent flight.
lifewithdrsabra/TikTok

Some suggested people do it to wrangle their way into a free upgrade.

“Just know they booked two business and one eco thinking they’ll strong-arm someone into giving up their seat,” commented a user.

“I wonder if some families actually on purpose buy the cheapest tickets, to plan to ask someone for their seat. ‘I got kids, pls move,’” said another.

Sabra told BuzzFeed she was upgraded on her trip with Air France, and did consider switching but the seats she was offered were not as good as hers.

“It was still first class but all the way in the back,” she explained. “I kindly said that I’d rather keep the seat I selected and she didn’t insist. They went ahead and found another resolution pretty quickly.”

“So no, I am not a terrible human being,” she quipped. “Also the child was like 13.”

Requesting a seat change often results in airborne arguments — particularly when it involves kids.

In the past, weary travelers have claimed parents resorted to letting their kids crawl all over them in retaliation, when they have refused to swap seats.