Plane Passenger Gives His First-Class Seat to 88-Year-Old Lady, Making Her Dream Come True

Illustration - Shutterstock

A young man traveling in business class with his family on a Virgin Atlantic flight from New York to London did the most unexpected thing by swapping seats with an 88-year-old woman in economy class. Touched by the kind gesture, a flight attendant shared the heartwarming tale on Facebook.

Jack Littlejohn was heading back to Scotland after attending a charity event put together by his brother in New York. When he learned that his mom surprised him and his siblings with a business-class ticket, he thought it was nice but wanted to give it away to someone in the economy class, so that’s how he met 88-year-old Violet Alisson.

“You couldn’t have found a sweeter lady,” he told The Washington Post.

The older woman was traveling back to London after visiting her daughter in New York. Due to a knee replacement, Violet hadn’t visited her daughter in a long time. When Jack offered her his first-class seat, the woman was surprised. She recalled saying, “You’re joking.”

However, it was no joke. The kind young man wanted to offer her the first-class experience. Unsure at first, Violet asked the person next to her for advice. “Do you think I should do that?” she recalled. The woman sitting next to her told her to “go for it.”

Touched by the incident, Leah Amy, a flight attendant, narrated the sweet moment in a now-viral Facebook post in December 2019. She started by writing: “Of the hundreds of flights I’ve operated, I’ve had the pleasure of looking after footballers, supermodels and some Hollywood movie stars but let me tell you about my two favourite passengers EVER!”

Illustration - Shutterstock | Carlos Yudica

Jack helped the older lady with moving her luggage. After that, he “sat on the row of seats directly next to the economy toilets and never made a peep or asked for anything the rest of the flight. No fuss, no attention, literally did it out of the kindness of his own heart, no one asked him too,” Amy explained in her post.

According to Amy, “[Violet’s] dream has always been to sit at the front, and Jack made that come true.”

She continued, “You should of [sic] seen her face, when I tucked her in her bed after supper.”

The flight attendant explained that the elderly lady wanted to snap a “selfie” to prove it to her daughter, as she wouldn’t believe it. Amy shared photos of an excited Violet on Facebook and further added that she was going to post it to the lady too as she had no phone or an email address.

Amy’s Facebook post has since been liked 23,000 times and was shared 5,500 times, with thousands of commenters commending the young man’s gesture.

One social media user wrote, “Being an older senior, this brought tears to my eyes, God bless them.” While another remarked, “Good to know there are caring young people in our society well done, your family have obviously given you the true values in life.”