FlyerTalk Forums - Seat Assignment Software Idea

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Quote:

Originally Posted by danielonn (Post 18072684)

Part of the software does a background check to see if you are not a pedophile just like when applying for a job. This is where the Trusted Traveler comes into play I guess.

Not a hope in hell. Frankly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by danielonn (Post 18072676)

I think it would be nice to be able to fly in a section of the plane that is quiet. If the airlines are subjecting us to pay extra fees then we should be able to at least score a section of the plane that is quiet with no middle seats.

I was once on a flight from HNL-SFO with an obese passenger next to me hogging my seat. The flight attendant did nothing about it after mentioning that I can't use the seat I paid for. While I understand the passenger is obese he should have bought the extra seat . I could not even put down my arm rest and the passenger's body was infringing on my space.

This also happened on a recent flight on Southwest the flight attendant allowed an obese passenger to sit next to me and he could barely put down his armrest.

My point is if the airline takes our seat assignment away and we are put in a bad seat we would complain. So by having this system there would be some complaints but not as many.

Lets see the airline shares my data with the TSA so the airline with the passenger signing up to my service should allow the service to gather info to get better seats. Its like on Facebook you "Allow" Facebook to get your profile info same here the airline is sharing your info with a 3rd party(my software) to get them a better seat. I know for a fact people would gladly pay a fee to get a better seat or be matched up with someone who can drive them home.

But the flaw in the plan is YOU may want to enter your data. But 5 / 10 / 50% of the plane does not. So the software becomes utterly useless, as it can't take into account your parameters effectively - you can't tell where children and babies are sitting, you can't see if your boss is on the flight etc. So in actual fact, software becomes more useless than not having it - as a human can do a common sense check and select a row that seems to be made up of single travellers (aisle and windows taken) whereas a family is more likely to have picked a complete row of 3 etc. There is simply no way the software, with only a portion of the plane participating, can get you a 'better' seat.

Besdies, do you really think people are going to start entering their weight on booking forms so you don't end up next to a linebacker?

As reported by many of the news outlets in the past day or so, KLM will allow you to pick seatmates based on their facebook information. Passengers choose to upload their facebook or linkedin information into the seat map, and others can look over who they want to sit next to.

It's totally opt on the passenger side, if you don't opt in they won't have any info about you.

Oh, good, yet another way to disclose even more personal information about ourselves. :rolleyes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by danielonn (Post 18072676)

I think that situations of this kind don't need computers to handle; in fact computers cannot do it better than humans. After about 1/2 of the folks have chosen, perhaps 2/3 if you are lucky, the system doesn't have enough degrees of freedom to accommodate more choices. Escalate (that's a verb commencing an imperative sentence written in English as opposed to Fortran or Java or C++) the matter higher up (in the sense of to a ground complaint resolution officer as opposed to 35,000 feet) if/when needed.

So the airlines are going to build a massive new system that invades its customers' privacy, costs money to build and maintain, returns this nothing incremental to them except bad press, protests, and potential legal action....to solve exactly what problem? :confused:

Background checks to get a seat assignment? Huh?

The KLM thing seems interesting on the surface, although I'd be concerned about the type of people who will opt in. I'm not that chatty on flights. However, if I had some Amway products to sell, an exciting new investment opportunity to share, or maybe a strong desire to talk discuss my religion with strangers, I'd opt in. It'll be interesting to see how it goes in practice...