After 10 hours on a plane, Elise Tran craved natural light. As her flight from Seoul to Boston soared over Canada, she raised her window shade a quarter of the way to catch a glimpse of the sunrise.
The man seated next to her was not pleased.
“Close it,” he told her.
“I explained to him that I just wanted to look outside,” Tran recently recounted. “He wasn’t sleeping. I didn’t think I was disturbing anyone. I told him I would close it soon. He literally glared at me and said, ‘Close it’ a second time.”
Not wanting to cause a scene, Tran lowered the shade and silently fumed the remainder of the flight.
“I chose a window seat, but it didn’t matter,” she said. “I couldn’t look out the window.”
Tran found herself front row — although technically she was seated in row 35 — in the latest of the airplane passenger wars. When you buy a window seat, do you have unlimited power to keep it open or closed, or are you beholden to your fellow passengers?
Window shade control has mostly taken a back seat to the lingering battle between recliners and non-recliners, debates over which seat gets which armrest, and gripes about carry-ons and smelly food. But recently, window shade etiquette, or lack thereof, has climbed up the complaint list thanks to, you guessed it, viral social media videos. Suddenly, everyone is throwing shade on shades.
This summer, two passengers had it out on a plane when one woman asked another to raise her shade as the plane was landing. I can save you the trouble of watching the video because it boils down to a repeated chorus of “Can you raise the shade?” Response: “No, you should have booked a window seat.” “Can you raise your shade?” “No, you should have booked a window seat.” Ad nauseam. Neither side relents.
There’s been a spate of videos (remember the great viral woman-versus-child window shade war from 2024?), social media posts, and articles about window shade etiquette. The biggest issue is control. Does having a window seat give the passenger sole control over whether the shade is open or closed? Opinions run the gamut, and they’re all passionate.
“The trouble with passengers is that they get incredibly territorial over their small area on planes,” said Ally Murphy, a former flight attendant who now hosts “The Red Eye Podcast.” “Their needs override anyone else’s. ‘I want to sleep,’ ‘I don’t want to be in the dark.’ It’s all quite childlike when you look at it, but the stressful travel rigmarole paired with sitting in tight spaces with strangers seems to boot all common courtesy out the window.”
Unfortunately, there has been little guidance on window shade etiquette, which has led to the disputes. In an ideal world, rules wouldn’t be necessary. People would be considerate of their seatmates, politely ask for the shade to be lowered or raised as needed, or observe others’ needs and act accordingly. But in 2026, nuance and manners on planes are about as plentiful as free cocktails in economy.
To take the pulse of passengers, I put the question of window shade control on social media. The responses were mixed. The majority ceded shade control to the passenger in the window seat, but many said those with shade power need to be considerate of their surroundings.
“The person next to the window controls it,” said Aaron Marquise of Montreal. “However, there is still a certain level of decency. If it’s super sunny out and it’s glaring on the screens, then we should discuss it. If it’s nighttime but there is light, it goes down. If it’s daytime and we’re waking up, it’s open.”
But not everyone was quite as accommodating.
“Window seat = window warden,” said Tanya Shenk of New Hampshire. “I usually keep mine up unless the sun is beaming in and burning my retina. But I do give in to self-imposed peer pressure sometimes. I don’t want to be that girl who doesn’t [care] about my fellow flying friends.”
Things got testy on my Facebook page when I posed the question to friends. A few hardliners said that the person in the window seat has absolute control of the shade, no matter what others say. That was met with a response of, “If the window seat can control the flow of light, the aisle seat can control passage to the restrooms.”
Yikes! Let’s take a breath before we start blocking access to bathrooms because a window shade wasn’t in a position that didn’t suit our needs. The etiquette here is simple: Don’t act like a jerk. If you want the person in the window seat to lower or raise the blind, politely ask. If you’re in the window seat and someone makes a reasonable request to adjust the shade, either do it or calmly explain why you can’t. A snippy response like “You should have booked a window seat” will not help you or anyone else in your row. If you plan to sleep on a flight, throw a sleep mask in your carry-on to help avoid altercations.
“Be aware of how your actions and choices affect the people around you,” said former flight attendant and etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore. “Sometimes a little kindness and compromise makes the flight more enjoyable for everyone.”
In case you were wondering, the FAA has no rules about when window shades should be open or closed. A popular misconception is that the agency mandates shades must be up for takeoff and landing. Whether shades are up or down is up to the airline or the flight attendants. Other regions are stricter; for instance, in Europe, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency includes guidance that shades must be up for takeoff and landing.
Perhaps an FAA rule about shades, even at cruising altitude, could provide some guidance and keep the peace. Even aviation professionals seem to be split on the question.
“Your proximity to the window shouldn’t give you total control over the shade,” said local pilot Patrick Smith, who writes the blog Ask the Pilot and supports open shades during daytime flights. “A polite query to your seatmates is appropriate. This is more so the case if we’re talking about opening a shade rather than closing one. If people are trying to sleep or watch TV in an otherwise dark cabin, popping up your shade lets in a startling amount of light.”
In the other corner is self-described cranky flyer Brett Snyder, who runs the aviation website The Cranky Flier. He said he’ll lower the shade if the sun is obviously disturbing someone or if he’s feeling benevolent. Even in those circumstances, he said he’ll still bring the shade up on occasion to see what’s happening outside.
“The person in the window seat controls the window. Full stop,” Snyder said. “As a window person, I choose that seat because I like to look out the window, and I won’t let one of those silly aisle people stop me.”
Perhaps one reason the window shade debate has been bubbling up lately is that shades are closed more often on flights, even daytime flights. The perpetual cabin twilight makes any sliver of sunshine all the more glaring. Passengers are either glued to screens or dozing off. The primary entertainment is no longer the landscape stretching out below or the puffy clouds, but the 500 movies and TV shows available on the seatback, and the sun’s glare can either interfere with sleep or make watching movies challenging.
Flight-attendant-turned-travel writer Alona Vasylieva, who worked for nearly a decade at a European airline, explained the darkened-cabin philosophy last month in a story she wrote under the very clickable headline, “As a former flight attendant, I hate when passengers keep the window shades open — and I’ve got good reasons.”
“On short daytime flights around Europe, everyone is usually wide awake, so we never force or ask anyone to lower their shades during flights,” Vasylieva told the Globe. “However, on long-haul flights, it’s actually a standard service rule to recommend keeping the shades down once the meal and duty-free services wrap up. It helps set a calm environment and encourages people to rest, since there’s not much else to do on a 10-hour flight.”
For those of us who can’t sleep on planes, or who enjoy looking out the window, a dim or dark cabin can become a chamber of doom and gloom. I even feel guilty turning on my reading light or keeping my laptop screen too bright for fear I’ll disturb the person next to me.
John DiScala, who writes a blog under the name Johnny Jet, said he’s noticed the same trend of darkened cabins. He wisely reminds us that perhaps, instead of bickering about the shade, we should ignore it for a while.
“So many passengers immediately put on their headphones, turn on a movie, or try to sleep, regardless of the time of day,” DiScala said. “It’s almost like we’ve forgotten one of the coolest things about flying: looking out the window.”
Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.