Originally Posted by
puddinhead
There are many threads in all of the airlines where parents don't want to pay extra for seating but complain loudly that they are separated from their children, expectiog others to accomodate them. I have no interest in paying for someone's extra expenses for your children. This would be like me complaining because I have enough money to buy an Aston Martin but not enough to pay for maintenance. Surely others can help.
I've booked award seats in Club Europe on BA (no non-stop SkyTeam flights TXL-LHR) and even in their FC equivalent I had to pay extra to select seat assignments. I did so I didn't have to try to seat swap when I take the flight.
While it's common on FT and easy to blame someone's "lack of planning" or accuse them of being too cheap to pay for advance seat assignments, IROPs can and do happen, as do last minute booking situations which can't be foreseen (family emergencies, etc.). Not saying there aren't people who don't plan ahead and/or rely on the generosity of others (I wonder how many people buy DL E fares and then just plan to ask people to swap), but that always seems to be the immediate thought on FT, perhaps because it makes people feel less guilty about declining the swap, feeling they can believe the person asking is solely responsible for the situation they're in. Not saying it's right or wrong - just an observation I have from my time on FT.
Originally Posted by
televisor
One solution is to charge for advance seat assignments, and have an algorithm that places groups in contiguous seating. This is basically what Easyjet does in Europe nowadays. If you don't pay you get a random seat assignment, every time I've flown in a group we were always in contiguous seats - and I've never ever seen people ask to swap seats there (actually I've also never seen that on other european airlines either, where seat selection tends to open up 24 hours before takeoff).
I haven't flown EasyJet but that solution doesn't help when you get rebooked because your initial flight canceled and now you're rebooked. I've booked flights 300 days out, only to have IROPs day of and get split up on the flight I/we get rebooked on.