JHake10

We had the same gate annoucmnent today for SFO-PHL about group 5 only having a personal item. Are agents just reading new scripts regardless of BE on a particular route? I didn't see any BE offered on SFO-PHL when I booked.

Starman

With load factors routinely near 85%, perhaps this is just the standard announcement that all carryon space is gone before Group 5 boards, regardless of the fare the pax selected?

Kevin AA

Please don't annoy everyone else by asking them to switch seats so you can save $30/person. Either cough it up or sit in your scattered middle seats and be quiet.

tcp1

Seconded. Seriously. This is one of my biggest annoyances about the potential problems with BE even if you don't buy it. Whiny seat swappers pleading their sob stories and acting all indignant if you refuse. The families who don't plan ahead are bad enough coming into the summer season - now those of us who actually care about where we sit have to contend with cheapskates hoping for some last-minute goodwill from someone who actually paid up? No. No way.

spin88

Suggested response:

"United is making me pay an extra $15-20-25+ to use the benefits United promised me for my status, and having fallen for their scam, and stuck with them as they further shafted me, I have no sympathy for you who also fell for their scam, but paid less"

lonelycrowd

Ouch, guess I should have anticipated such a response here...

I absolutely would never make up a fake "sob story," and I'd pay for the upgrade if indeed we would be unlikely to be seated together otherwise. But if 90% of the time BE seats end up being adjacent on UA, as seems to be the case on other LCC's, I'm willing to tolerate separation on the one out of ten flights that don't work out. I was just wondering if there are any data points yet.

spin88

I would NOT extrapolate from what you see on other ULCCs, nor airlines that don't assign many seats. on UA (or DL or AA, etc) by the time of flight, most seats are assigned, usually only middle seats are left. It is not the same as the agents seating people on an open seat map as happens with some ULCCs or a carrier like LH

Often1

Don't bother extrapolating. If you fly this route 100x/year, averages matter. If you fly it once, all that matters is the load distribution on the date of your flight.

If there is one seat left, that will be yours. If there are 5, one of those will be yours. Presume that people who may select seats won't deliberately choose lousy seats. So, you will get the dregs.

If you care about where you sit, don't purchase BE. The fact that you are spending this much time this far out obsessing on how UA might handle this suggests that the $20-30 savings isn't worth it.

flyerbaby19

I would change that. "United is making me pay $25 for this seat, but I empathize with your situation. If you'd really like to sit here, I'm happy to swap. I accept paypal, venmo or square cash and you can transfer me $25"

abaheti

Had this happen to me on AA recently. Couple got last seats, happened to be very nice exit row middles across the aisle from each other (they lucked out). They asked me to switch my exit aisle for one of their exit middles so they could sit together. I politely said that I preferred my seat and didn't want to switch. They got a bit testy with me and said that it was mean of me to not move. I told them that I had paid extra (I have no status with AA) and planned 3-4 weeks out for this specific seat. They spent the flight talking to each other across, and making a point of saying out loud how "SOME PEOPLE" are just so mean and don't understand their need to sit with each other, and trying to pass things across to each other. It was crazy. Midway through the flight, guy on the aisle across from me swaps over to sit next to me in the middle. I offered him a drink and asked him why and he said he just got fed up with them and he happened to know the person in the window of my row so they chatted the rest of the flight. On the same flight, a woman browbeat my colleague into switching from aisle (that he paid extra for) to middle because she preferred it over her randomly assigned middle. All for a flight from IND-LAX -- like you can't survive a few hours?

I fully expect this to be an issue on UA. And when it involves split families or kids and inexperienced flyers who just know they got a cheap fare (vs that I may have paid a lot extra for my seat), it is could be a problem. Maybe they should announce or give a little card out at boarding of the group explaining that others have paid extra for seats and may not want to swap with them.

Summer should be interesting.

flyerbaby19

My learning from this story:
UA should deliberately place folks far apart so they can't talk over their neighbors and be rude. Want a better seat? pay for it!

WineCountryUA

It will be interesting to see how UA/DL/AA handle the upcoming requirement to sit children with a parent for no extra charge.

I'm guessing the airlines may block some seating assignments in the far back of economy. This may address some of the request for seat shuffling but may force some last minute bookers into less desirable seats or no seat assignment.

findark

I agree. DL already blocks the last 2 (3?) rows of Y; it would be pretty easy for everyone to follow suit and assign BE families from the back forward.

asquare

Some observations from BWI-LAX flight today. Fairly lightly loaded in E+ at time of check in and went out with E+ seats still empty, and everyone cleared off of F upgrade list with still 1 empty seat, appeared that the whole standby list for the flight also cleared.

While printing my boarding pass in the regular economy area kiosks (Premier ones had a line, and there was no line in the regular area), I overhead an agent explaining to a couple with a baby that they would be required to check their rollaboards as the fare they had purchased did not allow them overhead space. Some confusion on the couple's part it sounded like as to why that would be, but they ultimately paid to check the bags without putting up a significant fuss. Can only assume they were on Basic Economy fare.

About 20 min before boarding, GA made announcements offering to check bags for group 4 and also announcing that anyone in Group 5 was only allowed underseat storage. There were apparently a moderate number of people without seat assignments as the GA continued to call people up and made multiple announcements that if your boarding pass did not show a seat assignment, that they would be calling people up by name but that people should not come to the podium until then. Appeared to me to be ~10 people. Also notable was that a number of them were groups of 2 so it would appear that these GAs were trying to keep them together, potentially either by moving couples from E to E+ to create space for BE, or perhaps it was just by luck that almost everyone who was missing a seat assignment were in pairs. These may have been people who bought E and had no seat assignment, or may have been basic economy people. No way to know as I didn't notice who the people were or what boarding group they were ultimately in.

warrenw

This sounds like a lot more work for Gate Agents, with the whole shuffle board of seat assignments.