Adam Smith

Because that would require competent IT, something that neither Aeroplan nor Air Canada has.

kwflyer

They chose to get onboard though.

Yachtman

I had situation with a different airline where the metal was changed at the last minute, so upon boarding my family (wife, and kids at the time aged 3 and 6) were given boarding passes for seats in 4 completely different rows. At first the gate agent was dismissive about sorting it out onboard, but then eventually dawned on her that it probably be better to fix the problem right away, which with a bit of shuffling people around they managed to do.

jaysona

You realize all rows of the airplane go to the same destination, right?

Gawd, when I had to fly with my nephew and niece when they were young brats I was more than happy to have them a few rows away from me! ^

quantumofforce

while they "chose to get on board", for some people working at a call centre is near the top of the employment prospects they will reasonably do in their life.

I try my utmost to be nice and polite with them even when things get frustrating. Sometimes I have to laugh though when we realise something simple to do is blocked by policy and we just deal with it the best we can.

YOWandbeyond

I ran into this last summer wth my daughter, who was 18 months old at the time.

I had purchased her a seat for the flight TLV-YYZ, and when we went to select seats (immediately after booking), there were no seats together. I called the agent, who assured me that the airline couldn't let us fly separately, he'd make a note on the file, and it would get sorted out before the travel date.

It didn't.

We tried calling again at the 24 hour mark, they told us it would get sorted out at check in.

It didn't. It actually got worse. We had been booked in a window and an aisle, albeit three rows apart, so we might have had a hope of switching. The check in agent switched us to two middle seats, one row apart, so no one wanted to switch.

They told us it would get sorted at the gate.

It didn't. They kept asking people to switch, and no one wanted to trade their seat for a middle seat.

They said we would all board, and it would get sorted on the plane by the Service Director.

It didn't. They kept asking people to switch, and people *KEPT REFUSING*.

In the end, the plane took off with us in different rows. It was only after 90 minutes of the baby screaming her face off that someone finally, reluctantly, agreed to switch.

I'm STILL pissed, and I can't believe no one at AC had the guts to put their foot down and make someone switch.

Bogwoppit

We had the same experience with an 8 year old child, nobody would trade for a middle seat. We had booked months out, had paid for seats and we all got split up when they decided to give our seats away when we were checked in with boarding passes in hand. Nobody would step up, not the gate agent, not the on board staff, nobody.

kwflyer

Working in a call centre can (rightly) be a middle class income. The amount of human relations skills (which many stem cheerleaders sorely lack) , technical knowledge, and flawless execution in a high attention detail environment where non verbal communication is very limited. Given most employment prospects are a ramp, and not a ladder, it's not appropriate to claim this is the best they will do in life given the many subjective, situational factors that go into ones employment.

Many call centre jobs are (rightly) more middle class, and not entry level. AP agents for example, make between 30-70k.

No one said anything about being disrespectful to them. But the good ac agents don't need to know how to solve every problem (caused largely from previous stem/decision tree makers), but rather, know where to go to find the solution to a problem. And a great avenue to document and communicate valuable market research that AC pays ipsos who knows how much, to get expensive market research that their in house team likely already knows.

siliconflyer

this is very timely.
I bought UA NRT-SFO last December for my wife and 5 yo daughter. The seat assigned were middle seats for both in different rows. I assured my wife that UA will take care of it at the gate. On the date of departure I was on travel in EMEA and had no ways to contact my family. The check in agent threatened her that they would have to travel in different rows in middle seats unless she bought upgrade to E+. She ended up spending $300 for the E+ seats. I wonder how low UA has sunk to gouge families for these extra bucks. If they only assigned the seats at purchase, I would not have bought the itinerary. They assigned seats only few days before departure.
How do they expect a 5 yo and mother to seat 2 rows apart.

KenHamer

C'mon. You're not really suggesting DL F is better than AC Y are you?

SparseFlyer

Oh snap!

FlyingNone

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I'm not yelling at YOU, it's the situation that infuriates me (leaving small children separated from parents)....earning a "middle class income"....should have nothing to do with using COMMON SENSE. There is nothing so difficult about airlines using a computer system (any airline) that shouldn't have the ability to juggle things around. I'm pretty sure every airline holds a block of seats together until boarding that can be used for this reason (families). The point is, God forbid they use care and common sense to actually HELP people. I feel it is the height of ignorance that any agent (phone, airport or otherwise) will not think out of the box in the name of providing good customer service. What does it cost them to forfeit those seats that carry an ancillary fee - if they're so worried about it, just look at your manifest ahead of time and move some of the higher fare paying people up to the better seats in advance of the flight. United used to do this all the time, actually had a staff member at the airport I worked at doing this for just about every flight and it worked....then came Continental/SHARES.....