Gweilo

(Please merge if this has been discussed elsewhere)

Travelled from Helsinki to Hong Kong in an A350 and paid for an Economy Comfort seat.

After the doors closed and all passengers were seated, one of the FAs walked round the (maybe half full) Economy Comfort section and asked a few passengers to move to their assigned seats. This left several blocks (of 3 seats) fully occupied, and others totally empty.

She then removed the signs saying that these (now empty) seats were reserved for Economy Comfort passengers.

After take-off, as soon as the seat belt sign was switched off, a few passengers moved from one Economy Comfort seat to another (though I didn't see anyone move from a normal Economy seat).

I found the whole thing rather puzzling, because on other airlines it's quite normal for passengers to move to empty seats after the doors are closed. So why ask someone to move back to their assigned seats. Is this a thing on Finnair?

lkrt

It’s just that no one gets to self-upgrade themselves to Economy Comfort.

Gweilo

That's what I thought initially, but why not let Economy Comfort passengers sit in an empty seat?

If they need to remove the "reserved" signs, that's simple and no need to move passengers before take-off!

lkrt

How would they be able to identify the passengers who paid if they weren’t sitting at their assigned seats. Of course they can move after takeoff: they just need to take the headpaper with them.

Hartsa

Asking for BP and checking from there.

lkrt

Sure, but how many of them would have their BP at hand after the door closure? It would slow the process down a lot. I can't see why they couldn't sit at their assigned seat just for takeoff (seat selection being complimentary in Economy Comfort).

Gweilo

You can select a seat, but you don't know whether the adjoining seat will be empty.

It just seems odd to me to ask several passengers to move before take-off rather than simply updating your list to show that the passenger in 24E has moved to 22C.

I wasn't moved, but someone was moved to sit next to me - and he seemed a little upset by it.

Jainzar

If you know the count of people sitting in Economy Comfort then there is no need to know where they sit in that section.

lkrt

Sure. The original question was why they did so and this is the reason.