Teacher49

A few days ago I was paged in an AC to come to the front desk to respond to a request for a seat swap by another passenger.

I am just wondering if others have been paged while working or relaxing in an AC to work out a seat swap. This question is my basic OP. I am wondering if it is common. Thanks.

I have written this preamble and added it to my original OP, because I realize telling the whole story below may have distracted from that simple question. Please feel free to comment on the merits of my own position positive or negative, but what I am really wondering is:

Have you ever been paged in the AC to work out a seat swap?

edited after reading the first 6 responses. Below is my original OP. Thanks for any responses to my question.



A few days ago, I flew DFW-ZRH. I sat in coach, exit row, aisle. Background.

I was in the AC before the flight taking a bit easy after getting up at 4:00 am to make the first leg SFO-DFW. I bought 60 mins of wireless access, spread out a bit, and was responding to emails when I was paged by name to the AC desk.

I did not have an upgrade request in, so like any parent, I wondered, what terrible thing has gone wrong at home that only person who knows where I am has me paged?

So, quickly, I packed up all my stuff and made for the front desk. After saying who I was, the AAngel says, there is a passenger who wants to know if you will trade seats with him so that he and his wife can sit together.

I just could not believe my ears. As calmly as I could - and there was no way I could completely hide the fact that I was stunned and not happy, I asked, "How did the passenger get my name and why are you bothering me here instead of waiting till boarding time?"

The AAngel looked mortified and exasperated and said, "Look the GA told this guy to come up here and see if you could be paged. I checked with the GA and she insisted that I do it. I don't like doing this."

I told her, "ok, it is not your fault. What's the story?" She tried to show me the seat map, but was not comfortable with the whole thing and had other people with real issues to take care of. So she said, "Look never mind, we should not have bothered you. Let me get back to the people here."

I was surely fine with that.

Later, I went to the gate. I asked very politely who had sent a passenger to the AC to roust me. I recognized one of the GAs who has worked the ZRH bound flights before - probably because she is a native German speaker. She said, "I only sent him to ask if you would switch. I did not give him your name only your seat number. I sent him to the AC just to ask if they would help him because he had been waiting for a long time to get an answer and he did not like it."

"So you decided to give your problem to me?" I asked. I told that I had been inconvenienced by the page and why. Her colleague looked at her, frowned, smiled at me then rolled her eyes at her colleague. And turned away.

At this point, the woman actually began to get wet around the eyes and sniffle, "They just don't like me at the AC. It was not my fault."

Now thing is I was not speaking loudly, I was not abusive or even close to being inappropriate. I was not happy, but was expressing a dissatisfaction quite civilly. The tears, IMO, were the "I'm caught with no defense but tears" kind of tears.

I gently said, "look, all I would like is to know that you understand that I do not think you did the right thing to send this person looking for me. That's all."

At this point the chief GA - I guess cause she was wearing a checked or hounds tooth jacket - came off the plane looked at the GA and very politely asked me - not her! - what was up.

I explained, calmly, and she said, "well of course you do not have to change."

I said that was not the issue, that I would certainly help the passenger if it is a good swap, that the first issue was that I was paged. We looked at the seat swap, it was an even swap and I said, sure, I'll switch no problem. I have been in the same boat and I will always swap if it it is a decent trade.

It was only then that the penny dropped and they realized that I really was only disturbed about being paged, and only wanted it to be understood that it was not appropriate in my view.

The head GA comped me for drinks the whole flight. When I said thanks, but I don't drink on airplanes, she said, "well you've been so nice, what can we do for you?"

Jokingly, I said, it is best for me to swap, too, because that woman might have been angry with me for the whole 10 hours -now my only concern is whether my new seat mate will want the power port.

"No problem," says she, "we'll board you with first class ahead of the other Plats."

So she did.

Good news was that my seat mate did not need to share the power port - which I certainly would have worked out with him.

Bad news was almost 4 hours on the tarmac for weather.

The other passenger came by to thank me for changing. I told him no problem, but who told him to have me paged - the AAngel or the GA.

"The GA," says he.

As usual, there are good employees and not so good.