Not to have given up my seat on plane

Ooh! That's a great idea if you are asked to move.

Yes but I expect to be reimbursed by you right now for the cost of my own reservation and for the inconvenience. £100 should cover it.

@Teateaandmoretea Teateaandmoretea · Today 21:19

They were clearly hoping no one would be in the middle seat.

Utter nonsense. As others have said. Some people want a window seat, some people want an aisle seat. Two mentally competent adults are going to choose where they want to sit that suits their preferences. Why should one choose a seat they don't want (the middle seat) if they are paying? It's a flight - even if it's long haul in most cases it's not going to be more than 14 hours or so. It is possible to cope with out being cheek by jowl with your partner/ spouse/friend/relative - assuming well, healthy adults.

NO ONE except an idiot would expect the middle seat would be unoccuppied because flight profit margins are so tight these days (hence charging for every seat reservation, checked bag and breath you take) that flights are scheduled to be overbooked. It's rare these days in economy at least to have many unsold seats.

The people who are banging on about this obviously don't fly very often.

I would have done it for about 50 quid

It’s not clear at all except in your imagination.

Some people want the view from the window, some want the aisle to stretch their legs a bit more or be able to walk around. Not manipulative.

Hahaha elbows out, run as fast as you can to the plane 😂😂😂 every man, woman and child for themselves!!

I might have considered swapping with her friend in the other aisle seat.

She would then be sat with her fwend (still cannot fathom why a grown adult can’t sit mere inches further away from a friend for a flight, but that is another thread entirely) and you would still have your aisle seat. And still be sat in the same set up of being between two friends.

But ultimately, no - I wouldn’t have swapped on principle, ridiculous behaviour.

They were clearly hoping no one would be in the middle seat.

Ywnbu, and I’m puzzled as to how you consider you could be.

But goady fuckers always pop up wittering on about how families should book seats and thus making them pay more than others. There really is no need and any issues can be avoided by early online check in. My kids are now old enough to sit on their own anyway but this seat booking is a rip off farce.

Or maybe their bluff was called and they just sat where their boarding passes told them?

How does booking an aisle help the friend who wanted a window? Why should she pay £23.99 for a seat she doesn’t want? To make you happy, a stranger?

Oh yes - I remember those days when EasyJet didn't have allocated seating 🤣🤣🤣

Yes, I noticed that with TUI airlines - I suspect it's because their clientele are likely to be mostly couples and families. And doing the window + aisle booking wou,d likely result in families and couples being split up and not having the most wondrous start to their holidays

In these cases they should kick the couple off the plane and tell them their luggage will catch up with them.

Innocent passengers shouldn’t be held hostage by these twats.

Hope they’re divorced now.

I'm not sure the auto allocation is based on the seats no one wants.

With RyanAir definitely yes - in fact a strapline of their advertising relates to not ending up with the dreaded middle seat. One of my more entertaining RyanAir flights was when there were just six of us on the plane and we were all autoallocated middle seats. Air stewards had to request us to move to the extra legroom seats to man the emergency exits otherwise we couldn't take off.

With EasyJet, however, I've always been allocated an aisle or window seat - could just be luck of the draw

IMO, it's a pity people do this.

If the answer were a default 'no', the CFs would stop imposing themselves on others. And if the justification for doing so is to be kind, then I'd rather be kind to the majority of travellers who do consider others - by sparing them further altercations of this sort - than to the CFs, who don't.

Great idea. I'm definitely going to do that next time. Tbh, never occurred to me.

You paid for it. She did not. Yanbu x

I wouldn't want to be sitting between someone I've annoyed and their probably also annoyed family, so I'd swap. YANBU though. I also wouldn't book a seat with my friend but have a non booked seat between us, that would feel weird to me.

How about this for entitlement?

On a long haul TUI flight - we’d paid for extra legroom in economy. Everyone loaded and the flight was already running late, when the cabin crew make an announcement that there is a honeymoon couple onboard that want to sit together and unfortunately, if no one volunteers to move to allow this to happen, they will get off the flight which will result in a further delay as their bags will have to be offloaded too!

I assume some very, far more generous person than me agreed to move as we took off very soon afterwards - but again, they’re bloody grownups and would probably spend the whole time at the resort wrapped up in each other anyway, so 9 hours on a flight apart wouldn’t have hurt them. Either that or paid for pre booked seats.

YADNBU
The woman was really rude to you. I like an aisle seat too.

Oh leave off . What a ridiculous comment.

But then what was the point of having paid for a specific seat?!

I never pay for seats in advance but if I did and then got the same as people who didn't I'd be fuming!! What was their reason for not refunding you when you didn't get what you specifically paid for?

When I travelled recently with a friend we decided not to sit together as neither of us wanted to pay to sit in the middle seat.
We booked a window seat for me and an aisle seat for her in different rows. I don’t know if it would have been possible to book in the same row as I didn’t try.
A man tried hard to get the man in the aisle seat in front of me to swap with his wife. He really wasn’t taking no for an answer. He kept saying that his wife was just about to get off the plane. He was very vague about her seat and of course it turned out to be a middle one. The man he was trying to swap with was amply built and quite reasonably said he had paid for an aisle seat as he didn’t fit well in a middle seat.
Once everyone had boarded there were some spare seats and the cabin crew found 2 together for the man and his wife.
I have to admit that when I finally saw his wife she did look very stressed. If there was a good reason for him not booking them seats together he didn’t mention it.

You must be joking ... BA did it to myself and a friend once when they swapped the aircraft on a 9 hour night flight, so instead of the window/centre seats booked at £63 each we got stuck on a centre row of 4

I did ask for the difference in cost to be refunded and answer came there none