fgirard

But, I'm sure some families would use it to their advantage, knowing others would not have read the actual text of the rule.

MSPeconomist

However, won't families complain that the only adjacent seats require fees?

KevinDTW

That's exactly what it sounds like to me. As long as the airline has made this disclosure, it will not be considered unfair or deceptive for them to sell the tickets even though adjacent seats are not available.

The_Bouncer

That's a chance I'll take. The only seat swaps that I have ever seen "offered" (read: demanded) have seen me get the raw end of the deal.
If you happen to score the 1-in-1,000,000 J-for-Y swap, good luck to you. Enjoy it.

PTravel

Which others? Airline personnel will know (or, at least, should know). Do you think some family is going to misstate the law? Someone who is foolish enough to believe some entitlement-demanding parent who claims "the law says you have to switch," deserves to lose their seat.

So what? They complain about the same thing now. Even here on FT, I've seen posters say, "When I went to book my flight there weren't adjacent seats, so I'm counting on someone to switch." I think what will be interesting, though, is what happens in IRROPS. I can easily see a family that booked adjacent seats and weren't given the warning winding up in scattered singles due to an equipment swap or IRROPS. I think they would have a valid argument with the airline though, obviously, not with other passengers. I've always believed that families should sit together, but their gripe is with the airline, and not with me for not moving -- their problem is neither my responsibility nor my concern. Similarly, if the airline decides to move me because of a family, my complaint isn't directed to the family but to the airline.

Proudelitist

The law only says the airline has to notify the family if 2 or more seats together cannot be assigned.

It says nothing about having to actually seat them together.

sethb

And, of course: 2 seats together will only be available in a premium section, and the family won't pay extra for that. Then they'll claim the airline violated the law.

Meanwhile, the airlines will just add a paragraph of unread boilerplate to the ticket purchase process.

sethb

When has the actual wording of the law prevented people from claiming that something else is the law?

sethb

I've been offered plenty of equal-to-slightly-better swaps, as well as some worse ones. And I've seen even more like that, under the reasonable assumption that most people usually don't care which side of the aisle they're on.

MSPeconomist

I'm sure airlines will be willing in IROPs to let families wait (at their own expense for food and lodging) until the first available on which they can be assigned seats together.

mikeef

Funny you bring that up, it happened to us about a month ago. Family of four (Both kids are 7, despite my insistence that they should stop aging.), Parent 1/Child 1 in Row 7 (3-across), Parent 2/Child 2 in Row 8 (also 3-across). AA substituted in a smaller plane and somehow managed to put my wife and I next to each other, with Child 1 in a middle in the back and Child 2 in a middle even farther back.

We went to the check-in counter and, to AA's credit, they did some pretty serious logistics to fix it. They left my wife and I together and put both the kids in the exit row, which was the only row that had two seats together. Obviously, kids can't be in the exit row, but they figured that there would be a couple on the plane somewhere that would want those seats, and they would switch. My wife is also ExPlat and was first on the upgrade list, so they left my PNR attached to hers, since it looked like there was plenty of room up front. Sure enough, my wife and I got upgraded, so they took the kids, moved them over to the row my wife and I had been in and then I sat with one of the kids in Y, while she sat with one in F.

The two F seats were both windows in the same row, so they each sat in their seats and waited for the aisles to board. When the aisle seat people boarded, my wife offered that she or my son would switch with either of them if they wanted to. One was kind enough to take her up on the offer.

And then we had a 30-minute drive from the airport to the house, which gave my son plenty of time to tell his sister all about how he got to sit "in the big seats at the front." That was certainly pleasant.

Did they handle it the right way? IMO, I think they did. Their solution moved as few people as possible and, if anyone was asked to move in coach, they were moved to a better seat (assuming you prefer the exit row, which would normally cost money).

Mike

Lkeade

My husband, son, and I were traveling together. The flight home was 3-4-3 and we had chosen a window, aisle, and middle section aisle in the same row. The plan was that I was going to offer my aisle for the middle seat as long as the person in the middle did not try to seat poach the window or aisle before we got there. My son and I boarded first and I took my middle section aisle seat but there was a woman standing at his window seat. She didn’t ask; she told him that he was switching with her husband, and you could see the husband a few rows back standing at a middle seat. My son told her no, and she should get out of his seat. Again she told him that he was trading with her husband and he said no, he wasn’t. She then said that since he didn’t have family, he had to swap. I leaned over and said I was his family and he wasn’t going anywhere. She then moved to the aisle seat and he took his seat. My husband finally made it on to the plane to find her now sitting in his seat and she told him that he needed to trade with her husband. He said that he was sitting with his son at which point she got up and called a flight attendant and said they were rude and she refused to sit between them. The flight attendant found her a middle seat further back in the plane but I did see that she managed to get someone to switch and ended up next to her husband in the aisle seat. My guys ended up with an empty seat between them.

Tchiowa

There is no law against that.

violist

Sounds like constructive fraud to me.

Proudelitist

As usual, to cover their legal obligations, the airlines will state this in the COC. It's fine print. As such, they have a sound argument that the customer was advised that they may not get adjacent seats and if the customer failed to read the COC, that's their problem.