How does the FA know award from cash-paid tickets? Even an award seat has been paid for, sometimes quite handsomely. *Non-revs* on the other hand should sit down and shut up.

If the wife is hott she might get hit upon a lot? Or the hubby is hott? ..... :D

I agree. Sitting apart for a short flight is not the end of your relationship. It's great that you want to sit together, but why burden other passengers for this?

An alternative is that if you're that concerned about sitting together, refuse the upgrades and take your original seats in coach, which I'm assuming were next to each other.

I forgot to add, look tough angry and talk like Mr. T

I pity the fool!

There actually are people who want a window. It never hurts to politely ask the two aisle people. If they say "no" drop it and be polite.

My wife and I both GM get upgraded at the gate often for the LGA-ATL flights and are not sitting together. We board and I let my wife do all the talking...she just very nicely ask the other person to switch whether its an aisle or window, and they always do. Obviously having an aisle to bargain with is better though.

And yes, some LGA-ATL flights do have meal service even though its under the published mile amounts.

If a good-looking lass offered me "compensation" I'd switch... but payment would be due in advance. ;)

I didn't realize they did a meal service on that short of a flight. If that is the case with the OP's flight and he gets someone to switch with them, they shoudl definitely tell the FA to take the other persons meal choice before theirs.

Is this really a burden? Are we that antisocial that fielding a simple polite request is too great an annoyance to manage?

Don't feel bad about asking, and don't be hurt if the person in the seat says no. I've seen FAs facilitate the request as well.


I travel a lot, my wife doesn't. One of the great things about when I get to travel with her is sharing the experience. I'm actually getting to spend some time with her.

Do yourself a favor and try putting forth a *tiny* bit of effort to make other people happy. It's good for you.

The correct thing to do is have your wife start crying and show some tears.

My order of F seat's desirability: aisle, window, aisle bulkhead and least window bulkhead. This seems to be the same for a majority of F flyers.

Re seat swap request: I am batting 0 and my wife is batting 100%, Wonder why?

Agree on your priority list. I will swap an aisle for an aisle (non bulkhead) at any time. I will swap an aisle for a window if approached nicely for a short flight. For a long flight, I will not give up my aisle seat, tears or not.

One of life's greatest mysteries. Why *do* guys do things women ask? ;)

I agree with most of the posts. I always choose an aisle seat and do not like sitting next to the window. I get asking relatively often to switch; I normally do not, but will if the flight is short and I am getting a bulkhead window. One gentleman got especially surly with me; my response was "If it was so important for you to sit together, you should not have taken your free upgrade in the first place". That shut him up. :D

As far as switching seats, I have no problem with it. I just don't like the bulkhead. I prefer the last window seat in F so that I can recline as much as I want without fear of bothering anyone. Because of this my seat is almost always available.

This sounds like the spilling water on the aisle seat or getting up to use the bathroom very frequently to get out of a middle seat approach ... so unbecoming of First class! :)

But I agree-- asking nicely (without assuming or taking it first) usually works. Also this NPR article has some other strategies that work to get people to agree to a request:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012...rsuasion-works

Personally I like the door-in-the-face approach :)