jewels421

I so enjoy the DYWKIA thread, so I’m happy I get to contribute a story. EWR yesterday evening, PreCheck line. The woman whose job it is to check your boarding pass to make sure you're Pre was also making people consolidate and put their bag in the sizer. Annoying, obviously, but what are you gonna do. Well, the guy in front of me started in with "I fly with this bag every other week, I know it fits", "I'm going to miss my flight," and, weirdly, "But I'm first class" (several times). As if being in first class would have anything to do with your carry-on size? The woman leaned in and said that her boss was right over there and she had to make him do it, but even then he resisted. Eventually relented and it fit after some maneuvering.

Funniest part? He was on my flight. Not in first class.

spin88

+1. I always hated flying through there, always some idiot on a power trip. JFK is not great, but for some reason I never seem to run into the odd EWR power trip problems when I fly through there.

JVPhoto

I never had any run ins or seen the red coats do anything at EWR.

At LGA at 5:30am one was making everyone use the sizers.

Soccerdad1995

Sounds like two DYKWIA's here. Three if you count the Red Coat's boss.

izzik

You should check out the IAD-DXB flight -- the line for Group 1 is so long, much longer than the other boarding groups, that people have to do a double-take when they realize that it's a long way to the end of the line.
Eventually someone just starts cutting in (creating a new "line", then merging) and it's a free for all.

CoolMike

On a recent domestic T-Con I heard a passenger loudly and repeatedly asking the FA's to reset the wifi - which wasn't working for him but was working for many other passengers.

He complained like this for a long time - 25-30 minutes.

10 minutes later I was in the back galley and hear two FA's discussing how the wifi was maxed out and he just wanted the system rebooted so he could poach someone else spot.

This was either a UA, AA, or B6 flight - I can't recall as they all blur together now.

MattR23

Reminds me of a DYKWIA Jr. I encountered a few years ago at JFK boarding a p.s. flight for SFO. I'm in the group 1 line. They call group 1, and a kid (maybe 10 years old) and his mom get up from their seats, and the kid starts to walk towards the gate (as though he were going to cut the line). The mom says to him "Hey, honey, we have to get in line." The kid replies, "But we're group 1." The mom says, "all of these people are group 1." He looks at us incredulously and says, "ALL of THESE PEOPLE are group 1!?"

UVU Wolverine

Oh man, that made me laugh. I think it's so great because from an outside perspective, that's what anyone would think. I've flown all the majors in the past few months and have noted that United's priority boarding is usually 70% or more of passengers within group 1 or 2. I haven't flown United a ton lately, but enough to notice how "exclusive" priority boarding is with United.

andyh64000

Yep...I blow past them every time. It isn't DYKWIA.

weirdlyndon

With near certainty, it was NOT the B6 flight.

drvannostren

Do families count in this? Not exactly a true DYKWIA situation, but very self important nonetheless.

Got on ORD-SFO 1496 (this has nothing to do with the main topic I posted separately if you're wondering) had my aisle seat, 26D I'm sitting there as people are boarding in the lower groups. On boards Husband, Wife, small girl and another small girl. Family vacation time.

Then I notice dad pointing out the seats...wife is in 24E he's in 25B one girl is in 26B and the other in 27B...all middle seats. Understandably the parents want to sit with their kids. But the flight is full. Dad gets a young girl to move to his middle seat, she's small and was being nice.

Then they look at row 26, it's large businessman and medium sized businessman on either side of this kid. Mom asks the flight attendant to move her, not if she can switch. Flight attendant says something to the effect of "ma'am its a full flight and it's a long flight, you can ask but I doubt anyone will want to switch from an aisle/window to sit in your middle seat" (I know I sure as hell wouldn't even being a rather nice guy and usually accommodating in these situations).

She looks over at the 3 possible guys to move, none of them jump to the rescue as suspected. So she asks around, no one really wants to do it. She then basically guilts one of them into doing it by saying something like "come on that's my kid I don't want her to have to sit next to strangers for this whole flight, plus I'm going to have to come over multiple times to give her a book or food etc". Finally someone moves. So her and dad have a lengthy pleasant flight in their suddenly prime seats (window/aisle with a child next to you, it's as if the seat was open), while the other guy is miserable in between 2 others, the girl that moved seemed ok, but it only worked because she was fairly petite.

I saw the dad looking at his BPs and a guidebook, they were going SFO-HNL next...they were Canadians too which bothered me as a Canadian. So they had come from XXX (they were French so I'll assume YUL)-ORD-SFO-HNL.

I can't think one plans a family trip for 4 to Hawaii last minute, so that just means you were either too cheap or too stupid to pick seats at least in groups of 2, which I'm sure you could've gotten near the back or in E+. Instead, you decided to do nothing, then be kinda arrogant and disturb other people who did take the time to reserve a seat and you just assume people will cater to your whims because you have kids?

I'm also hoping that they didn't try this same nonsense on the SFO-HNL flight...maybe I'm way off, maybe they booked 3 months in advance and the flight was already almost sold out and only middle seats were left...but it sure didn't seem that way.

To me this screamed DYKWIA without "being anyone".

WineCountryUA

not uncommon for E- to sell out and you are instructed to get seat assignmenets at the airport even when booking weeks/months in advance.

or http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...at-2015-a.html

maybe, maybe not

eyeball1

Couldn't the family have just mis connected in ORD for whatever reason and put on the new flight with middle seats only?

drvannostren

Yes, that's very true, that's why I said "I think" or "it seemed like".

To me it was more of the guilt trip the mom put on. Like I said, I'm normally more than happy to swap seats with someone but when the options were the way they were situated, I would've held my ground regardless of what was said. I'd like to think the best, which is that none of this was their fault, it just didn't have that feel to it.

Garten

I don't know what this proves but my family of 3 booked a flight to Hawaii a few weeks ago, less than 24 hours before departure. Does that mean we shouldn't wish to sit together? I would gladly pay more for seats together, but UA doesn't make that easy.

My kids are teenagers now so if we don't get seats together I shrug. But what if they are 6? Or 4? Sometimes I do think it makes sense to be a little pushy. I would pull out cash to pay people to move, but wouldn't that be even more DYKWIA?

I had the line checker complain about my three bags (actually 7 between our 3 travelers) a few weeks ago at SFO. Moronic since I just put one inside another and then took it out at the x-ray. Not a DYKWIA but I do think that this sort of idiocy is somehow even more objectionable when they impose it on UA's best customers.