Lefly

On my first LH flight with TK (IST-IAH) I witnessed (first time also) people from economy trying to take advantage of unoccupied J seats. I was in 7K, the cabin was half empty so my row had no other passengers.

A bit after lunch, I heard someone saying something in the line of "this is business class", and when I looked I saw a FA sending a man back to Y, from seat 7D.

A couple of hours later was the time of a mature woman (60/70 yo maybe), helping herself in the same empty seat. I think she slept there for few hours, then disappeared to come back again some time later. I am quite sure at least one FA saw her sleeping in J but nothing happened until the last meal, when she was (finally?) sent back.

Thinking of that flight, the last row of J - probably because it was only me back there - was a bit neglected by the crew*, so maybe was easier to move there from Y, just a curtain away... but I was wondering if it's common occurrence? Anyone else have seen this?


*Once lunch was over, for the rest of the flight I got only one visit from FA to see if I needed something and that was only a bit before the last meal before arrival. I am reasonably sure no one came anyway when I was sleeping, as the towel from lunch was never collected, and I never received the bottled water.

AvidFlyer1990

It did happen once, on my flight from IST-IAD. Was in J, row 3 aisle, and the seat next to me was empty (at check-in, was pro-actively offered to block the seat next to me as an Elite~nice touch). J-class was about 70% full.

Two late teens/early twenties girls helped themselves to the two center seats in the first row.

The FAs sprung to action and sent them immediately back. I did ask an FA, what happened, and she was very apologetic to me, that this happened. Fantastic service and awesome food, btw!

LapLap

Saw it in October on an ICN to IST flight. I'd been invited from Economy to rest in the business class section (was really ill) and whilst I was there a mature Korean man snuck in and popped himself into one of the vacant seats in the last row. He did get asked to leave after about ten minutes. I got the distinct impression that this wasn't the first time he had done something like this.

JB0591

On Toronto - Istanbul flight yesterday, TK flight attendants put signs on each unoccupied Comfort class seat just before take off. I assume they have a lot of issues with economy doing a self upgrade.

nacho

They did it back then between IST-HKG.

Ryaies

They also do this on Lufthansa. There's always people helping themselves to the Premium Economy seats. The flight attendants are always very straight-forward: "excuse me, did you pay for this?", and the passengers will go back to their own seats immediately.

collegeidol

I experienced once on TK's IST-HKG route and the "self-upgraded" passenger argued with the flight attendant for a very long time! (Ended up some of the business class passengers helped to fight back the passenger.) Several other occasions in different airlines, mainly long haul because of the lie-flat bed??!!

radium_mask

Also witnessed this several times on Turkish Airlines. On flights to Central Asia ex-IST, I have even seen people plunking down straight into a business class seat when boarding, only to be moved on to their assigned Y seat when the actual seat holder arrived with an FA in tow.

I chalked it off to a combination of mentality (let's if I can get away with this....) and inexperience. Some people you see in TK Y cabin may simply not fly very often and may think "hey this seat is empty, I am not taking it away from anyone, what's the big deal?".

LH4116

Seat poaching is very common on TK, but I've never had passengers from Y sneaking into J mid-flight. But I could very well imagine it being the case on the newer 77W's with a small 2nd J cabin which often times goes empty.

elpiett

I've had people sneaking into J on a KTM-IST. Flight. Well, I say sneaking but I actually mean barging in with kids and sitting down in the last few rows, with the crew being perfectly fine with it...

ellyse

I was in... Premium Economy or whatever they call it on LH (pretty sure I didn't get upgraded to J, or I would've noticed), after the meal and lights out, 2 noisy Chinese women self-upgraded into our cabin. Sat in the 1st row chatting away loudly and pissing off quite a few pax including myself (I was 3 rows back and on the aisle seat in the opposite side of the cabin, that's how loud they were) and the Caucasian lady seated behind them. I went to ask the crew if anyone had just purchased an onboard upgrade, they were surprised and said no, then a flight attendant came over to chase the 2 women back to their Y seats.
If they wanted to do it, couldn't they have been less conspicuous?

LapLap

Were they served any meals?