I've read everyone's comments and this will probably get lost but I had the best experience with a stranger on a 4 hour flight - not all hope is lost! Flying from Ottawa (Canada) to San Francisco with a layover in Vancouver with my boyfriend to celebrate his cancer going into remission and his birthday. We decided to forgo the 100$ up-charge from the airline for booking seats ahead of time and decided to wait until check in to see our options. Ended up being able to find 2 seats across from each other which was fine with both of us as we were going to spend our holidays entirely together.

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Maybe it helped that my boyfriend looked a little like he still had cancer (bald, pale, a little sickly), but the woman beside me asked if my boyfriend wanted to take her window seat so we could sit together. She offered to take his seat and basically would not take no for an answer. That stranger started our awesome vacation off amazingly and I may or may not have started crying on the airplane at her kindness. We had a 6 am flight and a super long day of flying and driving ahead of ourselves and it was months of caring for my sick boyfriend and yeah, her gesture meant a lot to us.