Originally Posted by
lovely15
I'm actually not sure which is worse, asking an elite passenger who earned better seats to swap out of it to a regular seat, or asking someone who paid $50+ for a better seat to swap out of it to a worse seat.
They're equally bad: the would-be swapper shouldn't be asking the E+ (or whatever it's called) passenger to trade back to E- to begin with. They should be offering their one E+ seat to someone in E-. The swappers should then take the worse seat.
There are some combinations that make this impossible - e.g., holding two middles at the very back of the plane. In that case, the passengers should invest in books, magazines, and mobile entertainment devices.
And if you absolutely have to sit together for some reason, the overall landscape in 2012 is actually better than ever for you. Why? Now many major airlines will sell premium seats to non-elites at a modest cost, and with reasonable planning those seats are frequently wide open even when the back of the plane is completely sold out. So you're better off now than a few years ago when the "buy up" option wasn't there...you'd just see a full seatmap and no choices.