It’s a subject I’m quite passionate about, as those who travel with me will attest, and as I do in all other areas of modern American life, I lament the decline of manners.

One of my oldest friends, for example, has responded to the absence of in-flight meals by cooking and bringing with him a tub of jambalaya on every flight.

When I point out that this is a food with a strong odor, not particularly pleasant for people not eating it and certainly not what you want lingering on your clothes for a long flight, he responds that everyone else is bringing their Big Macs. Naturally I point out that this food arms race does no one good and that two wrongs don’t make a right and that besides, do you want to lower yourself to the level of people eating Big Macs?

Inevitably, my friend is also a seat recliner. His argument: When a plane takes off, everyone should recline, and that way, everyone is equally not inconvenienced (or, in my opinion, equally inconvenienced).

(He also steals music from the Internet, but that’s another issue.)

I’m a good deal taller than my friend, and have strong feelings on this issue. In my opinion, people should only recline their seats modestly, and preferably only after asking the permission of the person behind him or her.

You can imagine how often that happens.

Generally, of course, people just mindlessly recline their seats all the way into my knees, which makes it virtually impossible for me to move, stand up, stretch, read a book, use a computer, breathe deeply and so on.

And—I’m not proud of this, I’ll admit—I will respond by either shoving their seat back upright or (more often) blocking its descent with my bent legs. People either think their seat is defective, or they take the hint.

All of which is a long way to note that, on a flight from Dulles Airport to Ghana the other day, someone reclined so aggressively that the passenger behind him slapped him on the head.

Which prompts mixed feelings (I decry the violence while sympathizing with the impulse) in me.

It also prompted the jet pilot, accompanied by two fighter jets as an escort, to return to Dulles and not take off again till the next morning. Apparently terrorists have created such incidents as a distraction.

Reporting on the incident, the Washington Post rightly refers to seat reclining as “a typical airplane annoyance.”

Wouldn’t America’s airlines, generally the worst of the First World, do well by instructing people on points of airline etiquette? It would help them avoid such costly incidents.

It would also have discouraged the people I once saw headed toward their seats while toting a large Domino’s pizza.

After all, the airlines are the ones who pack passengers in so tightly that a reclined seat becomes a serious space invasion…..