Skink

Maybe they were annoyed by your seat selections thinking that if it had been a full flight you would have been reaching over whoever ended up in 4B and 4E to take care of your small children the entire flight.

bmg42000

You clearly chose your seats hoping that no one would want to take the middle seat so you could get one for free. Now I understand why the gate agent acted like they did . Bottom line is if you want a seat for your child then you should pay for it .

sbm12

Nah....wife and I almost always do the same thing and hope for the middle seat to stay open. It happens sometimes and not others. Such is life. If the seat was actually needed they would've sold it. It wasn't. There was no policy or other reason for the GA to deny this other than that they were acting of their own volition and not in a particularly nice manner.

bmg42000

That is fine to do when you are travelling with your wife. Worse case scenario you do not sit together. When travelling with young children that should not be done. (Lets see what the other parents on the board say) .

bmg42000

According to the contract of carriage the OP should have been permitted to get the seat in that case. If they write to B6 I suspect they may get a credit (and cite the contract of carriage ) .

Harlem

I'm the OP - certainly we book 4a, 4c, 4d and 4f hoping that 4b and 4e remain unsold (even before we had our third child we booked this way). I believe it's smart thinking to do so. If perchanse the middle seat is sold we offer the person with the middle seat to take either the window or the aisle. So far, they have always accepted the trade. Who wouldn't trade their middle seat for a window or aisle seat - they actually are always excited to do so.
It's noteworthy that 3F was unsold so I know at least one window seat was unsold (I didn't notice if the front two rows were sold or not but 5B was also unsold).
Point is - it was assinine of the GA to force me to gate check the car seat - I couldn't have been more curtious to him - I couldn't have explained any clearer how what he was doing didn't make any sense. I couldn't have been more clear that the seats next to us were empty, that we had a window seat where we could put the car seat, that our infant would need to be held the entire flight, that our infant was safer in the seat, that my wife was safer with our infant in the seat, that our infant would sleep if she were in a car seat but would cry and be fussy in my wife's arms making the flight less enjoyable for everyone around us.
There's no logical arguement for the GA's actions. My hope is that indeed this is a GA who simply had a bad day - he had enough time to change his mind on several occations but my hope is that if the policy makers at Jetblue where put in his shoes they would have acted differently.
I've been flying Jetblue from the start - perhaps 90% of my flights over the last many years have been on Jetblue. I've just seen a big change since Dave was forced out - perhaps it's just me but my next flights will be booked on CO. We'll see how I like them.

bmg42000

Just bring a copy of the airlines policy on lap children and the seat so if you
run into an GA whose having a bad day you can point out the error of their ways. Sometimes GA's need gentle reminding of their policies (just be polite when pointing it out )

sbm12

What's the difference? If the seat is occupied then you trade and don't use it.

cdm115

What bothers me is that it's safer to have a child in a car seat then on a lap.

I disagree with allowing lap children for safety reasons; but, I can understand why people do it. Airlines out of pure common sense should not prevent a parent from putting a child in a car seat if the seat next to them is empty.

MHTFlyer

Totally agree. It's a good strategy no matter who you are traveling with. I do it every time our family flies.

Here's one thing I do not understand. Would your car seat have fit in the overhead? If so, how could you be denied to take it on board? Your plan could have been to stow it above. We never gate checked our infant seat on the few occasions when we didn't buy our DD a seat. I was absolutely paranoid it would get lost or damaged and there we'd be, stuck in an airport somewhere with no car seat.

Harlem

Agreed that it would have been a good idea to take it on the plane, but we already had one carry-on each. Because we were trying to play nice we didn't push it and try to bring on more than one. In hind sight I wish we had as certainly the FA would have allowed us to use it.
Going forward we'll cut down on our carry ons so we can bring it with us.

Harlem

As a follow up. I'd like to thank this gate agent who wouldn't let me bring on our car seat. It's now been almost exactly one year since this nonsense and I'd like to report how HAPPY I am that I've switched to Delta (note in the thread that I said I was going to try CO, but ended up switching to Delta).
I now have Diamond status at Delta and they treat me like a king. Free airport lounge services, a special customer service line so when I call I get a competent agent and don't have to wait on hold for more than 60 seconds, I HAVE INTERNET ON EVERY FLIGHT, front of the line status at security and during boarding, free upgrades to the front of the plane nearly every time I fly (and they actually have business class so that means food on my flights, free tv/movies, free drinks, larger seats etc). So I pay for coach and ride up front. It's great.
Since this incident with the car seat I've logged 200,000 miles and flying them on Delta has been a HUGE HUGE plus. Imagine all of the perks above that I enjoy. Having internet on the plane is amazing. I can answer and send emails, research projects on the net, catch up on Facebook, and during flights is when I monitor and book all of my future flights (it saves me so much time since I no longer have to do that when I'm at home) etc etc
For other frequent flyers on JetBlue what are you thinking? Move to a different airline who will reward your loyalty with trips in business/first class and start enjoying a better flying experience.

bubbashow

AND THAT WOULD HAVE SOLVED THE PROBLEM!!!! But, in this "me too, I deserve everything and don't want to pay for it world" it is easier to blame the airline than to pay for the service you desire.

If this had been DL, UA, or AA, would you have been entitled to an empty F seat - afterall, you have a child with you....you need more room.

Good for B6. Wish y'all would come to DTW.

Harlem

The purpose for me (and I'll assume almost everyone else on FT) is to learn how to get more and pay less. Why knock me for trying to get more for less? isn't it the point of FT to get more for less?

We booked our seats, we watched the seat charts, they showed lots of availability - so why buy a ticket for an 8 month old when we should have received one for free? Had the seat charts started to fill up we would have bought one for our lap child. We're not broke (we bought 4 ELM seats for that flight) but why pay $600 for a seat any reasonable airline would have offered for free?

Further - Why would anyone consider it bad form to book seats 4A and 4C and hope 4B goes empty? Everyone traveling in pairs should do this. When the person sitting in 4C leans over to a person who just sat in 4B and says "My wife and I would like to sit together, would you be willing to trade us your middle seats? If you're willing you could have the window or the aisle your choice." Who's going to say "NO I paid for the middle seat and that's where I'm going to sit!!" Who wouldn't be excited that they don't have to sit in the middle?

Strategies like this are the reasons we read FT - learning how to get more for less. It costs the same amount to book 4A and 4C as it does 4A and 4B but if you can increase the likelihood that you get an empty seat next to you why wouldn't you book pairs of seats like I do? I guarantee I am at least 10 times more likely to end up with an empty seat next to me booking this way.

Harlem

I don't think you've got the right comparison - of course I wouldn't expect an F seat in your scenario.

You're DL Plat - B6 not letting me bring a car seat onto a plane to use it in the empty seat next to me is like Delta letting a domestic seat in F go out empty with you sitting in the back. Per their policies you get that seat in F. That's the deal. You pay for Y but get F if it's empty (based on your position in the UG list). So if that seat in F was empty with you in Y then you have a right to be upset. You won't deserve DYKWIA status for expecting F there - you'd be right in expecting F there.

I get it - if you want F pay for F - I'd never complain about sitting in the back if F were full - but you have to admit you'd complain if a seat in F went empty with you in the back. Upgrades are Delta's policy. Allowing lap children to bring on a car seat for an empty seat is (or at the very least, is most often) B6's policy.

I would have been fine holding my lap child if the seat next to me was full - but it wasn't full -