Passenger Finds Out Her Seat Doesn’t Exist
Meg Butler October 01, 2018
Budget Indonesian airline Lion Air has just gone viral for issuing a passenger a ticket for a seat that didn’t exist.
Satwika Ika says that she was assigned seat number 35 F when she purchased a $45 ticket for a flight from Palembang to Jakarta). However, when she got on the plane she found that there were only 34 rows on the plane… unless you count the lavatory as the 35th.
The mixup (which, Ika says, also involved another passenger with a young child also in row 35) happened because of a last-minute aircraft swap from a Boeing 737-900ER which has 39 rows to a smaller Boeing 737-800NG, which has 34 rows.
But Ika says that she took the issue to social media (where it was liked more than 10,000 times) because the flight attendants were “rude” and “lacked manners” when fixing the oversight. After the post went viral, Lion Air issued Ika an apology which, she says, is the first she learned of the aircraft switch.
To read more, head to Traveller.
It has happened to me too. And i didn't find out until I got on the plane. I imagine it was caused by an aircraft change. The FA just said the flight wasn't full so take a different seat.
Yes, but the issue here is that the person boarded the plane with a seat that did not exist. This should have clearly been stopped when they scanned the boarding pass and addressed there without the person boarding the plane. That's the issue that I see.
This isn't even an issue, much less newsworthy. I've had it happen at least 30 times, usually because of an equipment change. I did have it happen in the pre 9/11 pick your boarding pass up at the airport days. The gate agent told me that I had a reservation but no seat. She didn't understand what had happened. Supervisor straightened it out and chewed out the gate agent. Gate Agent then came onto the plane and started yelling at me. Now that was newsworthy.
It happened to me once many years ago. On an Eastern Airlines flight out of Atlanta if memory serves. It did not turn out to be a problem: the non-existence of my seat in coach led to my being given a seat that did exist in first class.
Yeah, big deal. I had that happen on UA too, the FAs weren’t that charming either. Probably happens at least once a day somewhere.