Originally Posted by
emcampbe
can you describe the rule (my bolding in your quote) that states seating is supposed to be done ‘back to front’ for anyone? Been all flavors of UA elite for 15 years, with many other flights prior to that time, and I never recall any rule or policy requiring UA to provide seating back to front. In fact, well before BE existed, and still today, the protocol was generally always to seat any standbys or those without seat assignments at the seat closest to the front, within their purchases class when available, including considering their general eligibility for E+.
i totally agree that BE should not be seated in E+ when possible, and I’ve outlined many ideas that UA could use to reduce having to do so many last minute seating requests and to keep parties together when possible, for example, and would likely keep them in E-. However, my experience, at least pre-COVID, has been that those getting seats last minute had generally been put in E- when it is available, then by front to back, unless they were entitled to E+. Not saying that was necessarily the case 100% of the time, but generally was.
I suspect now, being short of staff, probably less time at the gate and more pressure then ever to get flights out on time, some of those checks are getting lost. And with all the IRROPS, and the inability of UA to exactly match E+/E- capacity exactly based on entitlement for every single flight, yeah, at some point, you’re going to have a few that get an E+ seat for free when they don’t ‘deserve it’. Just like they have to do op-ups sometimes. But it’s an imperfect system. But let me ask you: would you rather have an empty middle next to you if it meant the flight was going to be late because they needed to check all thise boxes? Do you really think that there is a legtimste reason that you are ‘entitled’ to an empty seat next to you vs. someone else. Do you think the family already worried about their connection time should have that much less time to complete that so you can have an empty seat that you didn’t pay for? We are not living in the days of 50 and 60% LF anymore - there is rarely an open seat to be had. Expecting UA to hold an empty seat for you these days is wishful thinking.
Again, I agree that BE should not get E+ unless its absolutely necessary. Sometimes it happens, but it is what it is. With all the issues in the industry today, this is a problem that is down the list of priorities for an airline like UA.
Obviously, it's a rule I want to see implemented, not a rule that exists today. Short staff has nothing to do with it, this problem has been going on for years, long before any virus or economic issue, and it's not "sometimes it happens", it happens on every single flight I've been on when seated in economy. And let's stop waving the "entitled" word around - blocking middle seats next to premium customers seated in economy is just something that should be done as a basic, elemental service lift, just as United did it long ago before the merger, this is not something new. Also, there is no rule that I am aware of that states BE and standby should be seated front to back when clearing the list. The rule I propose is very simple - all BE customers are to be cleared into seats back to front, all stand by customers are to be cleared into seats back to front unless their status or employment contract dictates otherwise, and all middle seats next to a GS or 1K customer should remain blocked until needed - and it doesn't take too much logical analysis to figure out those middle seats should be taken for assignment, automatically by the computer, in the order of lowest to highest fare 1K, then lowest to highest fare GS until all are assigned.
It's really not that difficult, except for an airline that simply does not care about the service basics.