Among the many inconveniences of air travel is the battle of the armrest.
To whom does the single armrest belong, we ask. Is it a fence that separates strangers or is it an award for the person in the dreaded middle seat? Is using it just survival of the fittest or is it a courtesy extended?
Fret no more. A new product might solve the problem for those who feel they must have possession of the armrest.
Arthur Chang came up with a solution that turns a single armrest into a double armrest, presumably appealing to those who learned to share as a child. Called Soarigami, the $20 portable device latches onto the armrest and creates a two-elbow space.
Chang told The Wall Street Journal that it is a nice conversation piece. If you bring it with you, he says, and offer it to the closest passenger, it give you a kind of moral triumph. "[If] they refuse then you kind of won the armrest fair and square," he says.