Couple come up with genius plan to stop people sitting next to them on a flight

As we all know, sometimes travelling by plane can be a dream or a nightmare, depending on who takes the seat next to you.

The video begins by showing TikToker Olivia covering her mouth in shock, before it then cuts to her boyfriend rocking what appears to be a baby swaddled in blankets.

The pair are sitting on either end of a row of plane seats, and while it looks normal enough, the voiceover reveals what's really going on.

It says: "Does anyone else's boyfriend do the most absurd things to keep the middle seat open on an aeroplane? Like pretending to have a baby?"

Olivia captioned the now-viral video: "The things he'll do to keep the middle seat open on an airplane [sic]."

As you can imagine, the video went far from unnoticed on the social media platform, and at the time of writing, it's been viewed over three million times.

Viewers subsequently took to the comments section to weigh in on this unusual life hack.

"[I'm] gonna start sitting in the middle on purpose to spite people trying that hard," declared a second.

A third shared their alternative hack, writing: "I used to hold the barf bag in my lap."

"Smart!!" wrote a fourth, while a fifth described it as 'genius', writing: "No bc that's actually genius."

However, not everyone was so impressed by the hack.

"As if that would stop me if that seat was on my boarding pass," wrote one unimpressed viewer.

"That's the seat I look for," added a second critic. "I know parents don't want to be split up so they'll inevitably give up the window or aisle."

A third questioned how it would even work if someone had that seat on their boarding pass.

They wrote: "I'm still gonna sit in the middle seat that's on my boarding pass what [am I] gonna do seal someone else's seat [sic]."

"I'd sit there on purpose," declared a fourth while a fifth remarked: "Hmm with a full flight you can try anything. Won't work."

What do you think of the hack? Is it 'genius' or doomed to fail?