Originally Posted by
mr_sparky
Not to be the contrarian, but I'd much rather have a AS staff person make this request of me (either the FA or the gate agent) as opposed to another passenger. It's a lot easier to explain why I don't want to move to an employee as opposed to a high strung passenger who is emotionally invested in where they site.
My only concern about gate announcements is that I'm probably not going to be at the gate much in advance of when it's time to board, so I'm not sure how effective of a communication strategy this even is.
The other side of this is that people might feel less free to say no to a GA or FA. It could seem like they would risk being considered as refusing to obey a crew member. Some people would feel more like they can say no when a fellow passenger asks.