Yes, I thought so too. They exercise their little power this way but I wonder how many people are really aware of their manipulations. I also wonder how many more let it be and lose their money. Maybe these dealings with the seat assignments justify some of their employees job security, by proving that they make the airline earn money, who knows. On the other hand, I do not think that SWISS Brazil had too much involvement in this. Most probably they followed directions from Europe and I have a feeling that Brazil is considered a banana country, easy to manipulate and not a place to be concerned of.
Nevertheless, Brazil country law makes SWISS Airline (and others as well) carry up to two free pieces of checked luggage, and one carry-on for free in any international flight leaving or ending in Brazil. I heard that airlines hate that but cannot do anything about it. Or, perhaps, SWISS messes with its seat assignments and get some money out of it and so compensate their loses with their luggage fees. Again, who knows.
I am not aware of the AA luggage case but Americans have consumer protection agencies that advocate for passengers. Neither I am familiar with European laws and since Switzerland is not part of the EU, in addition to people saying that they launder foreign money, most probably regarding air regulations, they get away with many things that other non swiss airlines cannot. I do not want to be disrespectful to swiss people, which I consider to be very nice and honorable fellows. I am sure that they will be as disappointed as I am if they had to face a situation like we discuss in this thread.
Thanks you all.