seekinghelp

I've been flying every week for months, so it was going to happen eventually.... My first weird moment on an AS flight. Here's what happened-

I used a gold upgrade certificate (thanks Scott) to get 2c from LAX to SEA. I board last and notice a guy is seated in my spot, seatbelted in, ready to go and sipping on a FC cup of water.

I politely asked the FA to boot him, but the gentlemen comes up to the cockpit door and starts trying to negotiate with her for my seat. When it didn't work, he asked her if he could buy a FC seat.

It made me wonder if my "board last strategy" needs rethinking. I've always though It was best to board last and avoid the germ transfer of everyone walking past me in close proximity.

Has anyone else been offered cash for their seat? When do you board?

Safe travels,

John

SamuelS

Lol, is it April Fools day in August?

Truly bizarre. You didn't want to sell him your seat then? How much would you have taken, out of interest?

If you have a disdain for the riffraff walking past in the aisle, why not book a window seat?

ANC

I used to wait and board about 20 minutes until departure but I found that all the seat poaching was unacceptable, although it was always from someone already in F in another seat that must have preferred mine for either their own personal preferences or to sit by a friend or sig other. The other issue is overhead stowage, if you wait until toward boarding last, not only are all the F pax already stowing luggage...the people in 6F, 8D, 21E, 15B and 27A have thrown their crap in the F bins and your stuff ends up in row 12. I certainly dont board last because they could give the seat up to someone else theoretically if you fart around too long and assume you are a no show

mbluecpa

I take the same approach as ANC here. I would prefer to board at the very last minute but having done so one too many times finding no available overhead space or having someone in my seat assuming I will trade, I just deal with the scrum and board early.

Never been offered $ for my seat, though.

Doc Savage

For that flight, $500 would have done it for me unless it was for a middle seat.

YMMV

seekinghelp

Great question.

I would take $200 if the exchange seat was an isle, $300 for a window and $500 for a middle seat.

Anyone heading to ONT next week? I will pay $100 cash for your FC seat.
John

brokenpipe

This certainly could be due to the airports (SEA, BOS, EWR, MSP, LAX, SFO and DFW are my common destinations) I fly into, but when I'm in FC and can't find space up front I kindly ask for an 'orange' tag for my bag. So that I can receive my bag at the door when we arrive. You usually wait 3-5 minutes in the jet way after arriving but it saves the 20+ minute way at baggage claim.

djp98374

On a different carrier I one time tried to board only to find ome one in my seat....we had been assign the same seat but she tried to fly the earlier flight.

ANC

how did they get past the gate agent

Waitlisted

I now also get on first, tired of pissing me off more than once when my my wife and I traveling then had to boot two people back to their split up seats so we could sit together in our own assigned seats. One time a couple refused, and expected us to split up, had to get the gate agent involved and it got nasty. Happens too often on vacation destination flights such as LAS and PSP.

dave1013

When it gets nasty is the point at which these clowns should be removed.

formeraa

Let's just say that the boarding pass scanner may only validate the seat assignment...

Seat 2A

I wouldn't be surprised if maybe this guy has pulled this act before on other airlines and managed to enjoy a free pre-departure cocktail or two before he was discovered and booted.

billatq

I don't think this is uniformly true. In a rush once or twice, I've definitely accidentally tried to board the wrong flight and had the boarding pass scanner turn red and beep at me.

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Maybe that seat had boarded already?