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Extra Seat Given to Another Passenger: IDB?

Extra Seat Given to Another Passenger: IDB?

Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:31 pm
  #16  
nnn
 
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Perhaps a take away is not to keep EXTRASEAT empty if not a POS but rather state that you are purchasing the seat for an important personal possession, then stick something of reasonable size on the seat when seated.

If traveling with a child, I might consider putting a car seat in the window, but leaving it empty and letting the kid sit in the middle during boarding.

No idea if this would help. But, taking an analogous situation, certainly the GA would not have offloaded a seated cello (with its own ticket) without the cello's owner?
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:32 pm
  #17  
 
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Originally Posted by danM
The other weird thing is that the agent intentionally moved the son's ticket from window -> middle, which is really unusual and implies something more than the lack-of-communication or forgetfulness scenarios you describe.

Dan
I missed that point. Seems a bit wierd to me.
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:37 pm
  #18  
 
 
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Originally Posted by fastair
My guess (and it is only a guess): Agent scanned all 3, then in order to get his/her passenger count, to match the number of passengers shown on the computer, he/she deboarded that seat (most likely to print paperwork for the crew and for weight/balance.) He/she then either failed to recheck that person in so ticket showed used, or another agent (were there 2 working the trip?) saw the open seat and moved someone to it or onloaded a standby into it (after all, people want windows instead of centers.)

So my theory is either poor communication between mulitple agents, or a forgetful agent (if he/she then reassigned it out without remembering it was in use.)

I've seen this happen before, I'm sure I'll see it again sometimes. Rare, but not unheard of.
doesn't explain the seating shenanigans. They took the window or aisle, extra seat was a middle.
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:39 pm
  #19  
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Originally Posted by PV_Premier
mine, fixed it for you. certainly a refund is in order at least, right!?
I wrote what I meant, and meant what I wrote. I believe that booking an extra seat just for the purpose of extra elbow room is an abuse of the system.

Originally Posted by PV_Premier
if someone wants to pay 2x economy fare to have EXTRASEAT, that's also a reasonable usage of it.
That's where we disagree. And since seat assignments are never guaranteed, there's no assurance that extra seat will be next to you if you do it.
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:46 pm
  #20  
 
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Originally Posted by mahasamatman
I believe that booking an extra seat just for the purpose of extra elbow room is an abuse of the system.
Why is it an abuse of the system? The passenger is paying for the seat, not getting it for free as some sort of accommodation...

I agree that at the very least the passenger is entitled to a refund. Heck, they do that if they boot you out of E+...
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:47 pm
  #21  
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Originally Posted by mahasamatman
I wrote what I meant, and meant what I wrote. I believe that booking an extra seat just for the purpose of extra elbow room is an abuse of the system.

That's where we disagree. And since seat assignments are never guaranteed, there's no assurance that extra seat will be next to you if you do it.
But UA will explicitly sell an extra seat for this purpose.

So this argument makes no sense at all.
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:48 pm
  #22  
 
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Originally Posted by LIH Prem
doesn't explain the seating shenanigans. They took the window or aisle, extra seat was a middle.
/agree, but between what actually happened and what the OP who wasn't even there saw and posted could be not 100% accurate (is your wife's testimony, told to you and then posted on the internet considered reliable in a court?)

She may have believed all 3 were scanned, but there is no way to 100% be certain that all 3 were scanned based on heresay testimony after the fact. It may be looking like I am grasping at straws here, but I've seen it a zillion times (myself included as to making errors) where a customer has multiple boarding passes, mulitple people and one doesn't get scanned. Add to that the fact that there are not the same number of boarding passes as customers and the likelyhood of 1 not getting scanned (especially when 1 isn't carrying a cello or is of considerable size) increases.


OP, If you are with your wife, did she make it very clear upon boarding to the agent that they have (3) uniques seats for the 2 of you and that they need to scan all 3?

Heck, parties of 3 often hand me 9 boarding passes, 1 for each of inbound flight, current flight, and next flight. If I get 3 "good beeps" out of the gate reader, I consider it a success!
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:55 pm
  #23  
 
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This happened to Mrs1KPath and me last year...We were unable to use GPUs on the flight to LHR so I purchased three seats in Y+ and we were set...or so we thought...a few minutes before closing the door a GA came on board and said that they were using the middle seat and that we would have to apply for a refund...and if we did not like the situation that they would take us off the flight put us on a flight the next day. It turns out that the center seat was occupied by a "contract" worker for UA...who needed to get to LHR for a B-day party.

Upon arriving at LHR, Mrs1KPath went into full lawyer mode (she is a Law School professor and trial attorney) and tracked down the UA station manager and had a "little" chat with him...by the next morning we had a full refund for all three of our tickets and a very large customer service certificate as well...we were also upgraded to GF for the return flight and given a bottle of Champagne for our hotel room. By the time we made it back to the States (five days later), we had received two more large CS certs and a personal apology from our original departure city station manager stating that the GA violated a number of rules/standards and that said agent was no longer employed by UA.

As fastair indicated, I am sure that sometimes/maybe even most of the time this is an innocent mistake (but still due compensation)...but as my experience shows, it sometimes is not!
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 3:59 pm
  #24  
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Originally Posted by Kacee
But UA will explicitly sell an extra seat for this purpose.
The program is in place for medical necessity and for special circumstances (such as musical instruments). I am confident that they never intended to sell them just for passenger comfort.

The next thing you'll tell me is that it's fine to book the entire F cabin and cancel the reservations after departure so you can have it all for yourself. After all, you can do that on united.com, so is must be OK, right?
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 4:02 pm
  #25  
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Originally Posted by 1KPath
This happened to Mrs1KPath and me last year...We were unable to use GPUs on the flight to LHR so I purchased three seats in Y+ and we were set...or so we thought...a few minutes before closing the door a GA came on board and said that they were using the middle seat and that we would have to apply for a refund...and if we did not like the situation that they would take us off the flight put us on a flight the next day. It turns out that the center seat was occupied by a "contract" worker for UA...who needed to get to LHR for a B-day party.

Upon arriving at LHR, Mrs1KPath went into full lawyer mode (she is a Law School professor and trial attorney) and tracked down the UA station manager and had a "little" chat with him...by the next morning we had a full refund for all three of our tickets and a very large customer service certificate as well...we were also upgraded to GF for the return flight and given a bottle of Champagne for our hotel room. By the time we made it back to the States (five days later), we had received two more large CS certs and a personal apology from our original departure city station manager stating that the GA violated a number of rules/standards and that said agent was no longer employed by UA.

As fastair indicated, I am sure that sometimes/maybe even most of the time this is an innocent mistake (but still due compensation)...but as my experience shows, it sometimes is not!
1. GS.
2. Paid seat given to nonrev travelling off the clock. Probably a grievous violation of UA policies.

OP, don't expect the same results for a mere 1K.

Originally Posted by mahasamatman
The program is in place for medical necessity and for special circumstances (such as musical instruments). I am confident that they never intended to sell them just for passenger comfort.

The next thing you'll tell me is that it's fine to book the entire F cabin and cancel the reservations after departure so you can have it all for yourself. After all, you can do that on united.com, so is must be OK, right?
If you are willing to pay UA's price for all the seats, yes absolutely.

Of course your analogy is completely (and deliberately) inaccurate, since your pax has cancelled the extra paid seats for a refund. That is not what happened here. Money paid, but no value was received. Not sure why you are having difficulty grasping this concept.

If you're going to use an analogy, please create one that corresponds to the facts.

Last edited by iluv2fly; Jan 10, 2014 at 4:12 pm Reason: merge
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 4:10 pm
  #26  
 
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Originally Posted by 1KPath
station manager stating that the GA violated a number of rules/standards and that said agent was no longer employed by UA.
Wow! It's been against UA policy for as long as I can remember to discuss actual employee discipline with customers. I mean if an employer is afraid of stating anything more than "This person did work here then" to another potential employeer for fear of a lawsuit, don't you think this station manager is opening him/herself and UAL corp for some serious actions by this former employee? It would be pretty ironic if he/she (former employee) hired your wife to represent him against UAL. You could REALLY clean up then!

I'm asssuming that station manager was at least implying that the fact the former employee is no longer working is a result of the incident. Abscent that, I think it is still inappropriate for UAL corp (and a station manager of a hub is a VP level position) officer to be discussing the employment history of any of his/her employees to anyone outside of UAL without consent. But that's just me...an advocate for individual rights extending to the workplace!
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 4:16 pm
  #27  
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Originally Posted by mahasamatman
The program is in place for medical necessity and for special circumstances (such as musical instruments). I am confident that they never intended to sell them just for passenger comfort.
I don't believe that you've accurately described WHY this program is in place. In fact, I don't think you KNOW any such thing. Furthermore, the sale of these seats for comfort reasons is completely understandable.
Dave
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 4:21 pm
  #28  
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Originally Posted by mahasamatman
The next thing you'll tell me is that it's fine to book the entire F cabin and cancel the reservations after departure so you can have it all for yourself. After all, you can do that on united.com, so is must be OK, right?
Wouldn't really work. Either you don't check in for the other F seats, in which case CPUs will fill them, or you do check in and scan the boarding passes (assuming you can pay for an empty seat, which is the premise here), in which case you are out a nice chunk of change. I'd guess that UA would love you for the latter case, and perhaps find a way to blacklist you for doing too many of the former case.
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 4:25 pm
  #29  
 
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Originally Posted by nnn
Wouldn't really work. Either you don't check in for the other F seats, in which case CPUs will fill them, or you do check in and scan the boarding passes (assuming you can pay for an empty seat, which is the premise here), in which case you are out a nice chunk of change. I'd guess that UA would love you for the latter case, and perhaps find a way to blacklist you for doing too many of the former case.
CPU on a transoceanic flight? (it wasn't stated as such, but it makes the scenerio more viable) Not too many routes where a CPU will move you up on thse flights and C-->F upgrades are low demand in most markets (if they weren't then y is it u r as likely to find a NRSA in F as you are in Y, but rarely ever in C?)
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Old Jan 10, 2014, 4:26 pm
  #30  
 
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The problem with these scenarios nowadays is that if you put up any fuss you're likely to be kicked off the plane for being threatening.
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