abaheti

I have to admit to being in the wrong seat a couple of times. When I was flying a ton and had connections and returns on same day, multiple flights a week, etc... I was a creature of habit and had preferred rows and always an aisle. On some flights I was in 7C, next flight 7D, next one 8C etc. When the right passenger came up and inquired I immediately realized and flipped to my proper seat across the aisle. Genuine tired accident. I've also tried to get into the wrong hotel room because in my mind I was in the room number from the night before, frustrated that my key card wouldn't work... so I started keeping the card holder with my room on it. Thankfully I don't travel that much these days. Still a habit, though, what's wrong with me -- for upcoming flights on all four legs I have my wife and I in the same seats 2A and 2B.

huey_driver

I do my best to book vacations at least two months out. Usually, always in 1A and 1B... There have been times that on that one leg where we wind up in 1 E/F, someone has had to correct me when I move like a drone to my "normal seat"....

ExplorerWannabe

I will sometimes swap even if it’s a downgrade if the swap isn’t horrible (e.g., middle seat between 2 sumo wrestlers) and the people are nice or I believe their situation. I am happy to be a total dick about it if they assume I should just swap “because”. Think you’re entitled to my seat? No. I don’t have to give a reason, just no.

KabAir

This morning I had a lady ask me to swap my 2B for her 3E on a 757-200 so she could sit next to her friend. Fine trade, aisle for an aisle, and I let the FA know I was moving seats and that I had pre-ordered my meal.

The lady was standing by my seat but hadn’t sat down and I appreciated her asking me first. The interesting interaction was when I asked her to show me her boarding pass because of shenanigans people try to pull. She did in fact have 3E, and was shocked that anyone would try to pull something dastardly like economy to first. So there are still decent people in the world who are just looking for an honest swap.

findark

Definitely more like 2% for me (can think of ~4 requests in about 200 segments), plus another 2% pax who are in my seat by legitimate accident and move without complaint (I think the letter scheme for 2-2 F confuses people). I have declined requests, but I don't think I have ever seen anything outrageous like the stories here. Perhaps the most amusing was when my wife and I were in 2D/G on a 77G and the middle pax thought they were being helpful by asking to swap out of the middle

Don't know if it would be more common in Y.

JAXPax

Just right now…. Boarding an EMB-145. I have an A seat. I board and someone is in my seat. I say excuse me a couple of times. Get no acknowledgment. Then I see she is videoing something out the window (ramp agent with her bag maybe??). By this time 4-5 people backed up behind me in the aisle as I repeat myself louder and louder. Finally she puts down the phone, looks at me, and said “You ruined my video!” I held up my boarding pass and said that is my seat. She looked around like she was lost then got up saying “I wanted a window seat.” Told her that as of the last half hour one could still buy one for $20 in the front.

My job involves airports and air cargo so I generally take a photo of the gate departure screen before I board so it’s like putting a page divider in my phones photo stream. I looked at it and had caught the standby list. She was on it.

mfirst

JAXPax - come on, you did ruin her video

-m

/s as if that is not obvious, but I guess these days it is not always so

zombietooth

Very few seat change requests for me in my over 4 million miles of flying but, I've had to deal with several seat poaching attempts, where pax wouldn't leave on my request and tried to talk their way into my seat. Oddly, the most egregious were those who claimed to have a disability and "needed" my seat and, in more than one instance, an F seat over a Y seat no less. I've never yielded to any of these poachers and have firmly stood my ground and ordered them to leave in every instance. I think that some travel blogger had been successful with this technique many years ago-you know those articles with titles like, "10 Genius Travel Hacks That'll Get You A First Class Seat For Free", and so it was a thing for a while.

JAXPax

Best one I saw…. In a former job I had a Middle East carrier as a customer. Flight came in from the home country with a seat poacher. I was with their local station manager. This poacher apparently during flight came up, took a Suite, left his bags in the aisle, shut the door and refused to move or acknowledge the crew other than to say to put up his bag for him. Well rather than police, CBP denied entry because it would have been police and to jail anyway as airline was going to press charges. So was being returned to the Middle East.

Purser agreed let him sit in that seat if he won’t move. The crew won’t give as much as water unless he goes back to coach. And local security forces will be waiting to take him into custody on the planes landing next morning. Wouldn’t want to be him.

mfirst

JAX - I have heard of cases in which the passenger gets charged full price for the seat they poach

-m

ContinentalFan

And now they get to charge on the open credit card of the person whose seat they’ve stolen! 😜

JAXPax

This airline manager said that the passenger could have his hand cut off. But I never really could tell if he was joking on things like that.

canadiancow

That happened to me once. Lots of flying of the same aircraft type, always in the same seat, and one day I boarded while exhausted, sat down, and somewhat overheard a "commotion" between another pax and the FA. The FA came over, asked if he could see my boarding pass, I pulled it out, said "oh crap, sorry", and moved to the seat across the aisle.

Another time I boarded a flight pretty late. There was only one unoccupied seat up front, so I sat in it. A bit later, the FA was taking meal orders, and I heard from across the aisle, "Oh, Mr. Kennedy is over there" (presumably in response to "Mr. Kennedy, what would you like for dinner?"). That resulted in the FA coming over to me and saying, "oh, you swapped seats". I wasn't aware I had swapped seats. Nor did I care. I guess the other guy wanted to be closer to someone else. In that case I considered my new seat to be objectively better, so didn't think much of it (especially since I hadn't noticed). But I would have traded if he'd asked. I just would have informed the crew so they were aware.

People can be ignorant, or tired, or both, and mistakes happen. I'm happy that in over 1200 flights, I've never encountered a true poacher. And as I've also never encountered anyone who said no to anything remotely reasonable (the worst I got was a "no" for a window to aisle request on a 5 hour flight), I will also continue to say "yes" to basically anything within the same cabin.

ExplorerWannabe

I remember one case decades ago (so pre-9/11) when I was flying back to the US from Rome back in economy. This one woman had been assigned a middle seat but was laying sprawled across the middle AND aisle seat when the flight attendant came up and told her she was occupying another passenger’s seat.

The woman pointed to her leg which WAS done up in a cast — and said she needed both seats because of her injury. The FA responded with sympathy for her injury but said she should have taken that up with the counter agent when she checked in or better yet, contacted the airline when she was injured and treated but the flight was fully booked so there were no empty seats to give her.

To the best of my memory, the woman managed to fit her leg with cast in the space allotted her (granted, this was when we had a LOT more space in economy — especially on a 747 — than we do now) rather than be deboarded.

zrs70

I wonder if we can find the ruined video on social media?!