Adam Smith

Why are you opposed to an adult consuming a service that they did not a pay for, but not a child?

How is it not stealing?

If I break in to a rental car lot after the agency has closed for the night, take a car and drive it for a few hours, then return it (with tank refilled) before they open the next day, I didn't deprive the rental company of any revenue, because they were already closed for the day.

If I sneak in to a sold out concert without paying for a ticket, I didn't deprive the concert promoter of any revenue because they already sold as many tickets as they could sell.

I go to the theatre and walk in to a movie just after it has started and there's no ticket-taker, plunk myself down in an empty seat and stay for the movie. They won't sell any more tickets for the movie, so I haven't deprived them of any revenue.

How about I buy cheap seats to the upper bowl of a hockey game then move down halfway through the 1st period to the premium seats just behind the bench? The tickets weren't sold, or the ticketholders didn't show up, so I didn't cost the team anything.

In each case, the revenue loss to the service provider was "exactly nil". But in each case, I have taken something that did not belong to me. Something that everyone else has paid for.

No one here is arguing that the kid or the father should be locked away for life for it, but it's a pretty clear theft of services. (That's probably a more appropriate term linguistically given that "steal" often has a connotation more related to physical goods, e.g. "Take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it" from the Oxford Dictionary, but "stealing" is certainly correct in spirit).

If he wanted to sit beside his son, he could have gone back to Y. Surely someone in Y would have happily taken the father's seat in J if Y had been full. The kid (or rather his parents) did not pay for him to sit in J, yet he would be sitting in J. Unlike every other person who sat where they had paid to sit (in one currency or another) or were upgraded at the discretion of the airline (if there were any op-ups).

That's a pretty textbook case of special treatment.

How terrible it must be for the poor boy to sit in Y for you to feel compassion!

• compassion, per Oxford Dictionary: Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others
• compassion, per Merriam-Webster: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it
• compassion, per Cambridge Dictionary: a strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for the suffering or bad luck of others and a wish to help them

Sufferings, misfortunes, distress, bad luck! My oh my, how awful is Y?!?

You know, I really would like to be able to drive a Ferrari. Would you mind using your compassion to help me get the Ferrari dealer to drive one around on Sundays? They're closed anyway, so it's not like they'll be doing anything else with the car.

Okay, so, the scope of the debate is that this six-year-old child who you assumed to be well-behaved (I thought assumptions we unhelpful?) wanted to sit with his father in business class (or vice versa) and you're happy to debate this but:

• anyone who argues that taking something without paying for it is theft is out of scope because you disagree
• anyone who refers to a child of a different age is out of scope because we're only referring to a six-year-old child
• anyone who refers to a child that's poorly behaved is out of scope because you have assumed this child to be well behaved

So what exactly is within the scope of the debate? Which one of the father and son should have gotten the window?

It has been argued by many here that the event in question was a theft of services - the father attempted to have his son consume a service (a business class seat) that he had not paid for. Taking things that one have not paid for is commonly considered to be theft and is not widely condoned in our society.

Should we condone liquor store robberies because we weren't affected? Is someone embezzling money from a company okay if it's not the company we work for?

So what? If anything, teaching a child to get things without paying for them is worse.

You and CZAMFlyer seem to think that things happen in a vacuum, but life is not that simple. While BenL's infamous cheapening comment may have lacked tact, he was saying something that had been said for a while by other airlines. DL, in particular, has been vocal for years about the fact that much of its front cabins have been filled with people who got there through complimentary upgrades (i.e. paid no premium for their premium experience). In any one case, letting a customer sit up front without paying for it (either through comp up or, as in this case, just taking the seat) teaches customers that it can be done without paying for it and they adjust their behaviour accordingly.

While CZAM used the term "slippery slope" in a pejorative sense to imply that this assumption was fallacious, but the airline industry has real life experiences that bear it out and has been pushing customers to move away from this model.

Your boundless self-righteousness is truly extraordinary. Others have, in fact, made logical, coherent arguments as to why this should not be permitted and you have dismissed them out of hand as irrelevant.