I've taken to asking for seats toward the middle/back of the plane so I know that the overheads will still have some room available when I board.

I remember a flight a few years ago when a late boarding passenger actually removed someone else's bags from the overhead directly over his seat because he felt that space was reserved for him. Talk about brouhaha...

Actually, I'm not as selfish as I sound # I never have more than one carryon and sometimes a briefcase. I only wish that the gate agents would enforce the carry-on rules and not leave it to the poor flight attendants.

Also, is anyone else bothered by those large silver boxes under the seats in Boeing 777s - they take up an unusually large amount of the already limited available legroom. My wife and I have always flown in aisles-across seats, figuring we'd have a bit more elbow room on those long non-stop flights from SF to Europe, but it seems that on 777s the aisle seats have narrower legroom anyway, and the addition of those silver boxes makes it much worse. Someone told me once that those boxes are there because Boeing was never able to make the originally-designed seatback video system work, and had to cobble on a new system. (I can't believe the designers could have wanted it the way it is.) Although I think that Airbus planes, especially the A340, are much less comfortable, Boeing planes (not really much better) are getting worse all the time. I only wish that American, with their extra legroom, had better scheduling from San Francisco.

I also think the seats on airplanes are too hard (my butt is always hurting about six hours into the flight) and the armrests are too low (I really believe that's the biggest thing that keeps me from sleeping on flights.) Of course, since I never sleep on planes, I always have this maniacal desire to wake up everyone that is sleeping!

Always the grumpiest one on the plane... Al Sonoma, CA, USA