dilanesp

Think about it. Loads are lighter, which means the scheme can "work" more often. Further it could impact ticket sales more, because a traveler might see a seat map with only middles and decide not to buy a ticket.

Plus, it's a good time to be doing rules changes because they get less publicity.

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dilanesp

There are many things that may not be written into a contract that which nonetheless could be unfair.

I think, philosophically, you are doing something that poker players call "angle shooting". In poker, there are a bunch of rules. They don't cover every solution. They can't. So players exploit them. So, for instance, in many casinos, there is a betting line, and if you move your chips past them, you have made a bet. For most players this doesn't pose any sort of issue. But there are a few players at every casino which has this rule that intentionally move chips right up to the line and then pull them back, hoping to get a reaction. These players are not violating any rule. There is "nothing in the contract that restricts their choice". But they are viewed very badly in the poker community, and in fact, they are the type of people who never seem to get an invite to a home game, and some of the more customer-friendly casinos will actually look for reasons to ban them.

The point is, part of being a good customer is NOT looking for ways to say "I can technically do this thing that harms other people". Rather, the way to be the type of customer that businesses actually want to have and want to reward is to actually be fair to other people and to the business. Many of us don't try to manipulate the seat map. I have traveled with companions many times in my life, and except for the short period of time when United was actually guaranteeing middle-seat blocking for people at my elite level and thus encouraging it, I never did this. If we were in a 3 seat row, we either reserved aisle-middle or window-middle. Indeed, while I can't remember the first time I read about this "travel hack", I do remember that I immediately realized that it was harming someone, because it was taking a preferential seat away from someone who could have reserved it and given it to a different person who showed up on the plane with the middle seat assignment.

But I feel even stronger about this after the advent of Basic Economy. Because now we have this entire group of travelers who pay the lowest possible fare, get no seat assignment, and are thus likely to get middle seats. Which means the traveler doing this can now literally be taking a preferred seat away from someone who paid a higher fare to get an assigned seat, and giving it to someone who paid a rock bottom fare to sit in a late-assigned middle.

And here's my point- if I am an airline executive, I'm sorry, I don't view that person as a good customer. I would view that person as something else.

I don't see that at all. The premise of advance seat assignment is that you are choosing seats you actually intend to sit in, while leaving the seats you don't intend to sit in to other people. A group of travelers is not doing that. They are instead hoarding good seats to try and obtain something (EXTRASEAT) that the airline sells but they do not wish to pay for. Why does the airline have to be honest and transparent about how it tries to stop a practice it sees as improper?

Imagine a buffet at a social gathering. A's friends might be coming late, so the A collects all 6 remaining delicious dessert tarts and saves them for her friends. However, her friends later text and say they can't come. So A puts back the dessert tarts.

Meanwhile, B went to the gathering, loves that type of tarts, and is disappointed to find they were all gone. B leaves before the tarts are put back by A.

Now A says "no contract says I couldn't take the tarts". "I'm the type of person who you want at your parties and if you aren't transparent about your policies prohibiting what I did in the future, I won't come to your parties anymore". I don't think the host will be disappointed if A follows through on that threat.

The basic problem here is that the people who do this are rationalizing that it doesn't hurt anyone, whereas the airline, which understands the airline business, is quite aware that it does, in fact, harm other passengers. So the people doing this don't understand that they are A with the tarts, and that people like A might not be wanted at future parties.

That might be exactly what UA wants you to do.

See above. And also, bear in mind, the airline's best customers are almost certainly on paid First Class tickets, or already receive a lot of preferential treatment in seating such that they don't do this sort of thing. (Or will gladly pay EXTRASEAT if they need to be next to an empty seat for comfort.)

HNLbasedFlyer

I've had situations, not often, when I've looked at the seatmap, saw only middles in E+, and didn't make a purchase on that particular flight. I'm sure a bunch of middle only seats would have an impact although I don't know if UA is actively moving people on purpose.

I do know when aircraft swaps happen - they have a terrible system in place for seat changes. I got a text today of a aircraft swap for my HNL-SFO flight tomorrow to a polarized 777, so happy with the swap - but the computer randomly put me in the back of F with plenty of seats up front and the text from UA said "We've done our best to keep your original seating preferences...." I was in Row 1 - moved to Row 5 - with most of Row 1-4 mostly empty.

Boraxo

Again - for the last time - I’m not playing poker nor am I trying to game the system. My kids like window seats. My wife and I like aisle seats. Why should we be forced to take a middle seat? We paid for the the seats we want. End of story.

Guate87

Ditto...I agree with you.

I am 1K, my wife is Gold. Golds and above choose seats at time of purchase so the only elite who might be forced into a middle seat in our case would be a Silver, who only gets E+ within 24 hours of departure.

It would be bad customer service to move a full-fare paying Gold for a Silver or someone without any elite status.

I have been in an E+ aisle seat when Basic Economy ticketholders are moved next to me because E is sold out. Talk about bad for business! Why should I pay for E+ or even E when United puts BE customers in E+ for free?

It is very little to ask for United's software to be programmed to respect the choices I have paid for and/or earn according to their rules.

bocastephen

The bellyaching over this is really too much. It's a preference, not a scam, and sorry if people don't like it. I'll have no problem dividing PNRs to retain this ability since we're both 1K anyway.

jmastron

As far as I can tell, most seem to feel that it's okay as long as you don't end up being obnoxious about it (keep to yourselves, no talking over or passing stuff over the middle person if you keep the aisle/window).

The real key here is that United *forced* people to book aisle/window for several months as part of their pretending-to-distance (not actual distancing, mind you, as they would jam strangers in at the last minute whenever they could). Nothing stolen, nothing cheated, nothing gamed (by the passengers at least). When they dropped that fake effort, they probably had and still have a LOT more bookings like that than usual. So we *think*, but can't necessarily prove, that they got IT to write something to compact these around when checkin opens. Hopefully once the leftover "forced" aisle/window bookings are mostly gone (was that July/August that they stopped it?) they'll turn this off and let peoples' chosen seats remain.

bocastephen

I will agree that it's hard to tell what is really going on - as I mentioned upthread, AS had a "published" policy (a policy that was official but not shared with anyone) that companions on the same PNR were to be seated adjacent and any attempt to scatter in the cabin would result in a forced re-seat against your will. Of course in our collective experience with United, the lack of transparency means anything is possible.

LarryJ

Has anyone compared the times when the seat assignments are changed to the times when the flight's tail number is assigned or changed or does it only happen once per flight? I'm wondering if a process is run whenever a tail number is assigned which could be result in the reseating.

Something similar happens with our seat assignments for deadheads. If we have changed our seat assignment (same process to change seats as any other passenger) prior to our name replacing the placeholder name in the reservation, our seat assignment would change back to the original seat assignment, if still available, when our name was added.

phkc070408

I couldn't agree with this anymore. UA makes the rules. UA allows this. If UA doesn't want this, than explicitly prohibit this by modifying your seat-selection process.

First, Regarding Paid seats (E+ for us Kettles), Even though the upcharge you pay is based off of the desireability of the seat you select, unfortunately UA states that they can boot you from that seat and that

• An Economy Plus purchase reserves a seat within the Economy Plus seating area. Specific seat assignments are not guaranteed.
• https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...nomy-plus.html

That said, the same rules apply to both Paid E+ and comp. seats.

If UA either prohibited this through the seat selection process, or states that companions must sit together, it would be a different story, and then possibly "stealing" if one attempted to circumvent this. If UA wants to discourage this, but not explicitly prohibit it, a prompt should show up at seat selection, stating something to the effect of "Traveling partners are encouraged to sit together and may be automatically relocated closer to departure." To simply change someone's seat and not notify them is bad enough. To do it for the purpose of making more remaining seats likely too sell, and a non-operatonal reason, makes the seat selection process useless and counter-productive in some cases.

fumje

I have had this happen twice, I think, and neither time had an obvious change of aircraft. Working from hazy recollection (some of these details could be wrong!), I believe once I noticed it at least two weeks out, so I wouldn't think any tail were assigned. It was a 772, and it could have been a version change that I didn't notice. With that seat shuffle, I moved back to aisle/window, nothing else happened, and we flew that way. The other time I only saw it a couple days before with a 739, so it could have been a tail change. That time the aisle was taken already, but we cleared the T-24h CPU, so no harm no foul.

The fact that most reports are only one shuffle makes me think it's a system quirk and not an intentional policy. I believe there have been a couple reports of multiple shuffles, but it's unclear if config swaps might still be the issue there.

Separately, but maybe relatedly, there are some issues with seat assignments on a reservation with multiples of the same flight number. One case is when it is a 'direct' flight, but another is if you have two of the same flight but on different days, it will move you out of your seat for the second flight after you fly the first. An example would be one reservation with 1-mar ua297, 3-mar ua425, 8-mar ua297, 10-mar ua425. Before flying, the 1-mar/8-mar flights and the 3-mar/10-mar flights will be locked to the same seat assignment (same as for direct flights with a stop), but after flying the 1-mar and 3-mar flights, the 8-mar and 10-mar flights respectively will wind up with your seats reassigned to different ones. After a day or so (waiting for the mainframes to process coupons overnight??), you can re-do the assignments for the 8-mar and 10-mar flights. I'm sure that is not some kind of diabolical revenue maximisation strategy, so I'm willing to believe that the aisle/window shuffles are also incidental rather than intentional.

dilanesp

It only makes it counterproductive for the traveler trying to score an EXTEASEAT without paying for it.

​​The rest of us just select a seat and sit there.

Boraxo

Note also the options on UA’s competitors:

DL: blocked middle seat on all flights (temporary)
AS: Purchase E+ equivalent, receive blocked middle seat
WN: select any seat you want when you board and often end up with empty middle of plane isn’t full.

again, I’m not trying to game the system as each family member has a different seat preference. But the competition has no problem accommodating my preferences.

the lost

This is interesting, because i had to use a future flight credit from just before the pandemic and then add my wife as a companion to my reservation. The cs agent i talked to deliberately put us in aisle/window for a flight to hawaii. Will be interesting to see if that sticks next month i guess.

doug_999

As noted by @WineCountryUA, I believe the system sweeps a day or two out. After that, I think it occurs if there is a switch in AC (something requiring a different seat map, even if same AC type). It is definitely on purpose.