Phantom exit-row flag?
 

Just curious if anyone has any insight into what happened here:

I made a reservation in an exit-row seat. Later, I realized that I needed to bring my dog along in-cabin, so I moved myself to a regular seat. Later on, I called in to make the in-cabin pet reservation. The agent told me I would need to change my seat, as I was in an exit row. I'm not, I said; look at the seat map. He agreed and eventually was able to make the reservation.

At every single step along the way when I interacted with an agent I was told there was a problem, as I couldn't have a dog in an exit row. At each step, I patiently pointed out that I was not, in fact, in an exit row, and had to spend another five to ten minutes waiting for the agent to figure out a way to override the problem. At one point, when I tried to change myself into yet another non-exit row via the app (flight was massively delayed and some passengers dropped off), the app denied the change, saying that the new seat was an exit row and thus not permitted with in-cabin pet. I was in the SC at the time, so I went up and asked an agent. He couldn't make the change for me as the flight was under gate control, but he did confirm that the seat I'd wanted to change to was NOT an exit row.

So...what was the deal here? Why was there some sort of exit row flag on my reservation that wasn't cleared even though I'd made the in-cabin pet reservation AFTER changing to a non-exit row seat? Is this a known bug? Not a huge deal, but I'm curious.

I have noticed, via the pnr.sh tool, that when I select an exit row seat it generates an SSR attached to the reservation as “$EXIT” even though it was obviously free being a PM. My assumption is that this is some sort of a flag to indicate where a passenger has paid for an exit row, should a refund ever need to be processed, or to otherwise prove they were entitled to that seat. I have seen that SSR remain attached to the PNR even if the seat is changed.

My guess is that because that SSR stayed attached, it conflicted with the “PETC” SSR that became attached once you added the pet and kept causing system confusion. So basically an IT glitch.

As someone who travels with a pet once a year, this is certainly a good datapoint to have!

Exit row in the eyes of the FAA for pet rules are different than exit rows for premium legroom and extra costs. Was the new seat near a exit?

No, it was not. (In fact, there ended up being aisle seats in two different rows and I got the same error message for both...and, as I said, the SC agent confirmed it wasn't an exit row.)

GagaPilot, that sounds about right. Interesting, and something to remember for the future if I don't want to spend a fair amount of time explaining that a non-exit row seat is a non-exit row seat.