Proudelitist

Exactly.

No excuses are warranted. You don't need to explain yourself to a requestor nor justify your refusal. What's more, if you offer anything more than a polite no, you just give them more ammunition to argue with you.

MrTemporal

This makes to much sense. Obviously, you are a dangerous radical.

Sant

In your view, it appears passengers are expected to accept your request to switch seats.

PTravel

Nobody else seems to have noticed this. This would mean "swimming upstream" when deplaning to get any carryons stowed in the overhead. It also means that the pax couldn't easily reach, much less keep an eye on, anything stowed in the overhead in-flight.

Sorry, just because you thought it was a reasonable deal, doesn't mean the pax you were asking did. I travel with electronics and medication in my carryon, both of which I access in flight. Under these circumstances, I would have refused to swap as well.

Tchiowa

I don't know about others, but I make sure that I choose a seat ahead of time that fits my needs. So it isn't my "assigned" seat so much as it is my "selected" seat that I "reserved" ahead of time.

If you want me to sit in a seat that has features that are not as good as the one I "selected" and "reserved" then you'd better have a good reason or some money or both. And I still might say no.

KevinDTW

^^^ This, exactly. And I'd add that I determined the merits of those features based on my own idiosyncratic set of guidelines which may or may not be apparent to anyone else, but either way no justification or explanation will be forthcoming.

rjque

Not everyone wants this.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...e-me-gate.html

Artpen100

"I am waiting for him to ask to go to the bathroom. I am going to say "I'd prefer not to move right now"

Or he might be a New Yorker, in which case after the word "not" he would start crawling over you while saying "excuse me" and "coming through". It is all that experience from getting off subway trains.

Since I stopped traveling economy so much, seat swap requests rarely seem to happen, and in businessfirst, on the rare occasion, the seats are pretty equivalent (though I draw the line at taking one of the middle 2 on a 2-4-2.)

farci

I follow this thread with grim fascination; it's better than a weekly TV series with its twists and turns.

Maybe one of my fellow readers is a psychologist who can explain why a cross-section of perfectly ordinary people who would definitely help an old lady to cross the road seem to become so unreasonable in an engine-powered cigar tube at 37,000 ft?

LondonElite

That's a big deal moving from row 18 to row 3, not two rows forward in domestic F.

Proudelitist

I am not a psychologist, but I visit one regularly hahaha.

I think it's because helping an old lady across the street is helping someone in a potentially dangerous situation, and doesn't require a sacrifice of a purchased item.

Whereas, in a plane, it's really a matter of someone wanting to usurp your reservation for their comfort, and requires a violation of your agreement with the airline. The danger aspect is non-existent, as all are in an equally perilous situation anyhow. If the plane goes down, it's going down. And if an evac happens, we don't want to put an old lady closer to the exit...

Add to this the fact that much of the time, it's not a little old lady in need. It's an adult couple who don't actually NEED to sit together. They simply WANT to. Or a family with kids over 12. Or someone who has some OCD quirk about aisles or windows or simply a fear of the middle seat. It's never about danger, it's about prefrence.

CarolynUK

And the seat they want to trade with you is usually much worse than yours....

Interesting how the swapper always wants their wife/ child/ girlfriend to move next to them - but never seem to want to ask the person next to the wife etc to move to the better seat.....

jimat3c

++++++++++++1. You have hit the nail on the head 100%.

WillCAD

Why on earth do you believe that the seat swap in question was a simple and reasonable request?

You have only heard be001's side of the story. You haven't heard the other guy's side of the story.

Maybe be001's request might have been simple and reasonable for you. Maybe you wouldn't have had any compelling reason to refuse it. But he didn't ask YOU. He asked some other guy - and the other guy didn't give him a reason for the refusal (because it's none of be001's business, or yours, or mine, why the guy refused), so be001 has no idea whether the guy had a reason that you might feel justifies the refusal.

I'm not going to list all of the potential reasons why the guy might have refused the swap in an attempt to find one that you'd tag as "sufficient justification to refuse a simple and reasonable request." I'm just going to say, whatever they guy's reasons were, are his business and his alone.

But I will say that be001's attitude of "I'll get HIM!" shows a complete disregard for the needs of others. Especially since all he had to do to make things more comfortable for his pregnant wife was switch seats with her so she could have the aisle. But apparently, that either didn't occur to him, or he didn't care enough about his pregnant wife's comfort to switch seats with her so she could have the aisle (making it easier for her to visit the lav, as pregnant woman need to do often).

So, he's neither a victim nor a hero here. His wife and the guy who refused the swap are the victims - because she had to climb over the handicapped guy every time she wanted to go to the loo, and because the refusal guy had to deal with be001's snark whenever he wanted to go to the loo.

Yer startin' ta see pi'tures, ain'tcha?

Well, first you'll have to define what you mean by "unreasonable"?

My opinion:

1) Ask politely if someone will swap: Perfectly reasonable
2) Accept or decline a swap politely, without supplying the reason why: Perfectly reasonable
3) Intentionally take someone else's seat without their permission: Totally unreasonable
4) Demand a swap, as opposed to asking politely: Totally unreasonable
5) Get angry and insistent when someone politely refuses a swap: Totally unreasonable
6) Insist on hearing a reason for a refusal and haggling/bargaining: Totally unreasonable
7) Asking someone to swap a better seat for your worse seat, but not bothering to ask someone else to give up a worse seat for your companion's better one: Totally unreasonable
8) Retribution of any kind, from nasty comments to physical actions (seat banging, blocking access, throwing elbows, etc): Totally unreasonable

I think that about covers it, at least in my opinion. What's yours?

TheTakeOffRush

Ahh, but you see, this little old lady is really hale and hearty, and wants you to trade your car for her jalopy, and has no good reason. Oh, and she doesn't ask politely, she demands it, and grumbles or double parks between you and the lavatory if you decline her offer.