Have you ever noticed tiny triangle stickers on the inside of airplane cabins? These placards are always positioned perfectly above a window, but what do they mean? I recently posted a TikTok video that featured a black triangle, and the comment section blew up with all sorts of guesses about what it means (including a bunch of people who correctly identified it as the “Shatner seat”).
In reality, these triangles serve a simple purpose: they identify the windows with the best view.
Airlines don’t do this for passengers though. The triangle markings help flight attendants and/or pilots quickly find the best vantage point to perform a visual inspection of the engine, wing, or flight controls.
For example, let’s take a look at the highly publicized Frontier Airlines deicing incident that occurred in Nashville in early 2021.
The cabin crew was able to visually confirm that the deicing procedure had not occurred properly because they could see the buildup of snow and green Type IV (an anti-icing fluid) sitting atop the wing. Taking off in this condition would have been extremely dangerous, so the crew’s use of their visual markers kept their passengers safe.
So why are the seats directly underneath the triangle placard known as the Shatner Seat? In 1963, William Shatner starred in an episode of the Twilight Zone known as Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.
In that episode, William Shatner’s character is the only passenger who seems to notice the frightening gremlin hiding on the wing of the aircraft during flight. His character’s seat had the seat with the best view of the wing (just like the seat underneath the triangle markers in a modern airplane), so people naturally began referring to these seats as “Shatner’s seats”.
So the next time you walk onto a commercial airliner, take a look around to see where the triangle placards are located on your plane. If you happen to sit in Shatner’s seat underneath one of these black triangles, take a picture & tag us on Instagram or Twitter to show us your window seat view!
