So much has been said but here’s my thoughts:

if you book a flight late in the game you are often only given this choice: either pay for this or that seat selection or let the gate agent give you one for free when you show up.

It forces you to pay. And if you risk just waiting for a gate agent to give you one, this will not always play iut because if there’s an oversold situation or an aircraft change, guess who they boot? The guy w onseat assignment.

What gets me is that if you pay for a ticket to something it should automatically come with and include a freakin seat!

who the heck invented the idea that it somehow does not or that you now have to pay extra for that same ticket? We need to find this first person and hang them up Benito Mussolini style! (And the person who made it so once you join apple family sharing you cant undo it, and the person who made it so you can only share a link in facebook to people with facebook and can’t ever copy it out to share to other people with any ease)

look, I paid the airline for a darn ticket. It should let me pick and seat and be done. And they should all be the same.

It looks petty and cheesy to do fees
i hate fees

fees make people ansty and upset. People do the “ok fine whatever I’ll pay it but in protest!” And then they carry that internal frustration when they fly.

upset fliers make it harder on the staff
this is why there’s all these reported incidents of FAs kicking people off planes

if airlines want nice happy calm passengers that comply with rules, make the fees go away and just become part of the overall price! Stop dogging everyone!

think about anything you buy in life. Do you want just a one price or do you want to be roped in and then have to keep paying hidden fees? Which ride you wanna be on?

come on! Enough.