theddo

A recurring claim here is that families don't fly enough to know what a good seat and a bad seat is and would be happy to just sit together. When they are offered a solution that means moving the family to worse seats and someone else to a better seat all of a sudden the importance of moving is far less than before.

That, in my mind, means they have a very clear preference and opinion on what a good seat is.

Being asked to switch seats several times from a row with unlimited leg room to a row without it, and offering them to ask the person sitting next to the other one to move instead whom they don't even bother asking, makes you doubt the person who honestly doesn't know and just wants to sit with their family.

LCY8737

dolfinco

Ive enjoyed reading this thread as the one time i refused was when in 1A flying solo and couple were wanting a swap as the wife was in 3C. Chap in 1C asked the question and I simply said "I would rather not move thanks but perhaps the chap in 3A would be willing to swap with you" to which he replied "I would rather not"(repeating my words) and laughed. Fair play.

Was another situation which not the same thing but a few stories on here jogged my memory. Flying home from Vegas and dont know what happened or how but somehow i got bumped from J to WTP whilst checking in online. The UK call centre was shut and i decided to just "deal with it" at the airport. Had an argument for best part of 40 minutes because they told me they needed one of the seats due to a "staffing issue" and i enquired as to what status everyone was as i was Gold(it wasnt a dont you know who i am kind of way) and i just couldnt understand why i would be picked when i fly that journey 3 times a year in Business. Anyway, they sorted it but said that we would be in 17F and 17J as there was no seats together. I was just glad i was getting my bed home from Vegas so that would do for me.

The missus asked me to take the F seat as she didnt want to be in the middle pairing with someone and i said no problem. Board the plane and sitting talking to my wife through the gap as 17G was not in seat yet when this absolute stunner of a girl comes in, smiles, says Hi and sits in 17E. Well, if a face could launch a thousand ships, my missus would have made a fortune at the docks.

I give the missus a laughy cheesy grin and she gets up and stands next to G seat chatting away to me. Not in an aggressive manner or anything but just "marking her territory"

When 17G sits down and its apparent i dont know them, the stunner says to me, "oh are you and your wife split up, do you want me to take her seat ?"

"I would rather you didnt" was what the voice in my head said but it came out as "Oh that would be amazing thanks"

We got chatting to her later and it turned out she was a staff member who took unwell and had missed her "working flight" home. She had been in hospital for a week and this was her flying home so they had put her in Business. I didnt tell her that it was us she nearly bumped.

TPRun

LBA_flyer

I didn't pay for my first born...I did, however, pay for my seat.

I have no kids so that statement is not actually true but I would refuse to pay for the ability to reproduce

KeaneJohn

The thing that stands out here is more and more people without status refuse to pay the seat charge anticipating that it will work out fine. Clearly it doesn’t

LCY8737

TPRun

LCY8737

Sounds like you should have thought this through a little more diligently...

orbitmic

In the case at hand, the OP specifically mentions that seats together were available in the lower deck at the time of check in. I think it is quite difficult to make the argument that in this particular case, the people who asked the OP just wanted to sit together and could not have cared less where that was, because if that had been true, they would have done just that.

Whilst I agree with you that FTers may have particularly strong views of the value of a specific individual seat, I think that it is symmetrically a bit naïve to assume that occasional travellers are entirely seat-insensitive. Not all families are 'once in a lifetime' flyers and I have quite a few people around me who fly less than once a year, but most do tend to have an intuitive (and sometimes very vocal) preference for windows or aisles for instance, and very many like (or in some cases do not like) exit rows. It does not mean in any way that those people would necessarily choose to be separated in exit rows vs together in middle seats in the last row (nor, for that matter, would all FTers) but I think that suggesting that most occasional travellers are indifferent as to whether they get a window pair or two seats in a row of four, an exit row or not is not accurate and somewhat under-estimates the knowledge and critical capacity of the most occasional of travellers, especially as flying can be a really big deal for people who do not do it often. In fact, you only need to spend a few minutes in a regular check in queue (which I do regularly when I fly airlines with which I have no status) to be quite clear that many people do have preferences and are not shy about mentioning them at check in.

Dave Noble

Not at all. They may well have selected seats like that deliberately and would rather have window+aisle plus a separate aisle than sit together

All that seems to be in that case is the passenger in the middle wanting to switch to an aisle seat and trying to make it seem like some sort of favour that he was giving the passenger in the aisle seat the opportunity to have a middle seat

When I travelled with my mum and foster son in Europe recently, we delibately selected window+aisle plus aisle since the kid likes a window seat and both myself and my mother like aisle seats. Sitting separately is not something we are bothered about and none of us want a middle seat

We would also have been refusing any generous offers of a swap to a middle seat

LTN Phobia

I have been 'forced' quite a few times by QF as they tend to quite happily bump even Platinum members out of their seats to accommodate split up passengers without any pre-warning at all (they just TELL you at the gate your seat has been changed). Thankfully they have not been to much worse seats but I have not been too happy with that practice, even though I'd have offered if asked politely and nicely.

I have been asked and complied quite a few times by passengers on BA but it's mostly due to my not noticing first, as I tend to offer to swap seats if I notice someone being split up before I'm asked as long as they're not grossly inferior ones.

Most people aren't particularly grateful but one couple (who turned out to be on a honeymoon) were so sweet and happy to be able to be seated together that it made my day, and I think it's worth my while offering it to pretty much everyone I notice to have been split up in case I get to make someone happier just with that simple act of shifting one seat to another.

Dave Noble

Qantas does make it quite clear in its seat selection terms that it reserves the right to move people , even after boarding, so is quite open about the fact that it will do so

Takes away a lot of issues of people "refusing" to move when the person has to standing to make such a refusal

all ahead full

I've swapped once travelling CW, I was sat in the Window, and the crew came across and said to me and the lady sitting across from me if we were together ( we were not) if I would mind moving, quick as a flash, I said to the lady are we together? and grinned, fortunately she did see the funny side, and yes I did move to an aisle seat, and the crew gave me a bottle of Fizz for my trouble. It was an overnight flight so I was asleep anyway.

Schultzois

Ha - you've just reminded me of one of the few times I agreed to switch without so much as a second thought.
JFK-LAX, about 15 years ago, I reserved 1A on AA's old 767-200 transcon.
Michael Clarke Duncan (known for his role in The Green Mile, and a 2m tall 140kg man) asks me if I wouldn't mind switching so that he "can sit next to [his] assistant and get some work done." I end up in 1C which although not a window is a solo seat on that old plane (2-1-2 config). So it really wasn't that bad.
I do believe he was quite friendly about it, but he could have been saying just about anything, because all I heard was a powerful voice and all I felt was a physical presence that probably could have made me move anywhere!