The Seating Error: Who Is Responsible?
 

Well, I have an interesting story that I would like to see some responses to. I was flying with a companion LAX-BOS-CDG on Delta and Air France. We had one paid C fare, and one C award ticket, and were issued boarding passes at 7am in Los Angeles for both the Delta and the Air France legs (seats 4a,b and 3 a,b). The LAX-BOS leg was fine, BizElite US (very good service), and we arrived in BOS to board our AF flight.

The AF flight in BOS was being handled by Delta ground staff and an AF supervisor. The flight was announced as being almost full in C and Y (it was 100% empty in F) At the boarding call, we went to the counter, through passport check and presented our boarding passes. The system (Gate machine) would not accept them and they asked us to step aside. After 10 minutes of waiting (very, very rude staff) they handed us new cards: seats 3 D and 4D (two aisles, a row apart). I told them that this was unacceptable, that we were holding *confirmed* C class boarding cards with seats and that they had no right to change our seats. They said that they had made an error and given away our seats - which were issued 12 hours ago in LAX! At this point, I refused to board the flight until my original seats were restored: the agents, particularly the AF supervisor, were extremely rude . My request was that since we had a window/aisle prereserved, we should be given that, if not our original selections (remember, we already had the bp's for the seats!) and that if they had made an error, they should correct it through an upgrade. They refused, and eventually, we boarded the flight and took the assigned sh*itty seats.

Who is responsible for this screwup? We were both holding Delta tickets and prereserved seats and neither DL or AF would help.Short Note on the Flight: AF is one of the worst airlines in the world imho ("dinner" in C, on a transatlantic had a set first course, no salad, 2 choices for mains and 1 desert which came with the tray: Pathetic seats, service and food - never again!)

Getting nasty with the gate agents won't help you, even if it's an airline screw up. I've learned that the hard way myself, and now am really nice to gate agents, and if they say no, I realize that arguing won't do me any good.

I would have been super nice and asked to wait til the end of the boarding process to see if any better seats would open up. Then you may have been pleasantly surprised.

I suspect what AF did is cancelled your seat assignments so someone else could sit together. ANd since you both were on separate PNRs, they probably didn't know to keep you together.

IMHO, it's wrong to change someone's seat assignments at all, especially after check-in, without specifically checking with the pax first, but realize that AF was just trying to accommodate another customer.

I have found that the European airlines are notorious with honoring seat assignments. One time on KLM for AMS-ORD, they cancelled my elite seat assignment (was Gold on NW at the time) in the front section of the 747 and reassigned me to the rear of the aircraft. They lied and said that the flight needed to be light upfront for weight reasons. I boarded and found someone in my original seat so I just took a seat in the front middle row. SAS also cancelled our seat assignment for CPH-EWR once.

i have had mixed results w/ba re seats [discounted coach- top tier] usually it is wait until you check in, but sometimes i can get a seat earlier.

Agree completely as it has happened many times on UA w/my wife flying an award ticket so therefore different PNR's. It is AF's fault, but sometimes there is not much you can do about it.

You can bet that AF would receive a letter from me in regards to the matter though.

There are a couple of rules of the road if I may suggest - this comes not only from flying but also working gate/ticket counter.

1) You have no idea who gave the seats away. The chances are the person you are talking to DID NOT give them away - someone at the counter or another agent.

2) It really does not do your cause any good to rant and rave. There is nothing you can say or do they haven't seen (I'll get you fired -- I am best buddy w/ Airline Pres -- I am etc etc)

So what do you do?

1) Show them the problem - in your case I would show them the BPs you had and say - well does this seem fair to you? If you can get them to agree with you, you are half way there.
Yes there will be a few duds out there that will lie about things but GA's, like most people, want to help -- especially w/ a Gold or better customer.

2) Waiting till the end is a good suggestion. What have you got to loose? You may get a little more slack if there are not 20 pairs of eyes watching what the agent is doing.

3) Keep the BP's originally issued with you. If all else fails you can then get on the plane sit in first and when the FA ask for your BP show them the ones with someone sitting in your seat.

Who knows? This is a different person and you may get to sit there.

4) If all else fails write a letter. And write to the VP of Markeing -- not the President or Customer Service.
Why the VP of Marketing? -- He's out there selling the airline to folks. He knows how improtant it is to keep the customer happy. Other folks who are in operations are real big on rules... and that's what the rule says - tough luck. or We had a XYZ problem and the answer is you two can't sit together.

A VP will probably be more reasonable.

Send a letter -- be nice in the letter and ask for a couple of upgrades to compensate.

Just an idea or two. Didn't mean to take this long.

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TANSTAAFL - but if you work it right, FF miles comes pretty close.

How true!

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<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">I suspect what AF did is cancelled your seat assignments so someone else could sit together. ANd since you both were on separate PNRs, they probably didn't know to keep you together.

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I agree. And herein lies the problem. Regardless of how or why this happened, or that it shouldn't have happened in the first place, once it has happened, you have two sets of passengers each holding boarding passes to the same seats. Clearly, one party or the other is not going to get to sit in their assigned seats, and whichever party that is could claim "but I have boarding passes that say in writing those are my seats!" Obviously, there is just no way for the airline to honor both sets of boarding passes, so making this argument is pointless. Generally speaking, when there's a dispute over assigned seating, whatever is in the computer prevails.

How this works out depends on whether the airline uses the electronic boarding pass readers at the gate. If they do, the problem will be detected at the gate, and generally speaking, you won't get on the aircraft until you have a new boarding pass with a new seat. This is good in that it prevents delays on board the aircraft, as it's not possible for two passengers to have the same seat assignments.

On airlines that don't have electronic readers, the problem isn't discovered until you're on board and find someone else in your seat. This happened to me once in a similar situation as described above. Two of us were on the same PNR and had adjacent seats and a connecting flight. When boarding the connecting flight, a lady and her small child were in our seats, and after the computer was checked, we had been moved to seats several rows apart, even though we were on the same PNR. Most likely, the lady and her child had arrived at the airport without seat assignments, and there were no adjacent seats left. So, we got moved. At first we were disappointed, but the flight attendant rectified the situation by offering to buy all our drinks (we were in coach). That solved the situation immediately http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif. Such an accomodation would not have been possible had the airline used gate readers. Although it would have been better had the problem not happened in the first place, I thought it was quick thinking by the FA on how to resolve the problem and make everyone happy.

On flights where this is very important, such as the long international flight described above, and where two passengers are on different PNRs, it's probably a good idea to have the PNRs linked in the system, if that's possible, or at least have a note put in each PNR pointing to the other one. It probably won't make it impossible for this to happen, but less likely.