Originally Posted by
D582
Generally in my experience on AC and many other airlines is swapping seats when you board is fine, as long as there are not visits from the lower cabin to the higher cabin, swapping seats, or sending service items and food from the higher cabin back to the lower cabin.
Emphasis mine. On the assumption that this seat is paid for by your employer, my opinion is there is an ethical issue in swapping seats like this. An employer who pays to fly their employees in J does so because there is some derived benefit for them (i.e. more relaxed, more well-rested employees, able to be more productive quicker). They are not paying for this to let you give it a family member and substitute a cheaper seat for yourself. If you're clearly comfortable flying in PY, then you should be downgrading yourself to sit with your father in PY and saving your employer money. My previous employer had a policy that prohibited this both for the reasons I citied and for taxable benefit issues.
Originally Posted by
2MM Centurion
precisely. As an employer I eoidl consider this misappropriation. Probably a firing offense.
Employment lawyer here. I've seen this discussion a few times in my years of Flyertalk lurking.
I think it's important to keep in mind that whether the employer will care (and whether the employee could be disciplined/terminated) will depend a lot on context. Some employers spring for business class travel for the reasons described - and may have policies prohibiting switching seats - but for others it's just part of a negotiated comp package and viewed as a benefit to the employee. It is probably situation dependent as well - does the employee land and go straight into meetings, or were they flying out a week early to spend vacation days with their family prior to starting work? If the employee is worried, they should discuss with their employer.
If a client called me to discuss an employee who had switched seats with a family member and they wanted to know if they could fire them, I would need a lot of additional information (about both the situation and the employee's history) before I could conclude that this would be an offence for which you could terminate the employee for cause. It's possible, but it's going to be highly context dependent.
If they sold the seat to the highest bidder at the gate and pocketed the cash, that would probably be a different story...