Is commandeering another passenger's pre-assigned airplane a common occurrence?

[Rainbunny]

Just curious really after reading the article below about passengers being jerks and claiming other people's seats. I've never had this happen to me so I wonder if anyone else has had this happen?

www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/business/airplane-seat-swapping-once-a-gentle-sport-turns-rough-and-tumble.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0

I had to click on this as I couldn't imagine commandeering aircraft to be that common.

I've sat in someone else's seat though. Thanks to my son and me not being able to tell ABC from DEF, they just sat in ours as no real difference. Wouldn't deliberately someone's seat.

Airline should just kick these people off and not pander to them.

Why the hell should someone who has paid for a certain seat not get it?

Also what happens in the event of a crash with bodies if people are seated in the wrong places?

I've moved to seats that appear to be in rows with no other passengers in them, in the hopes that they won't appear at the last minute and that I'll get a whole row of 3 or 4 seats to myself. Occasionally they do board late at which stage if I see them approaching me I'll immediately move. That's only really on transatlantic flights.

Other than that I haven't seen it happening that I can think of.

Happens all the time here, especially if they've got the dreaded center seat.

magoria planes don't crash with neat rows of people sitting in assigned seats, they take body parts from a wide area and DNA test the bits.

Happens every time I get a flight here in China, but people also move very quickly when the seat owner arrives. It also happens very often on long distance trains, but it pays to be nice to your neighbour when you might be spending 3 days together on a slow train to Kunming...

Happens all the bloody time on saudia airlines. They actually have a standard recorded announcement during boarding that states you have to take your allocated seat. Even better, as happened to me last week, once sat in our seats, the saudi woman on the other side of my husband asked us to swap.so she didn't sit next to him. Fucking ridiculous.

Only one and it was a man with a wife and child who didn't speak English. I wa more than happy to swap, as the child was upset, I wanted to sleep and I got out of the middle to an aisle.

Oh and he was polite...made all the difference.

Stinkersmum - Your experience sounds a little like the plane that was delayed in New York last year because the male Orthodox Jewish passengers onboard (the flight was to Israel) refused to sit in their assigned seats as they would not sit next to females. They stood in the aisles and held up the plane for an hour. Not sure how they resolved it.

Rain bunny - we did swap over but I made the point that at our destination (New York), she might not get her way just because she's a Saudi, and it is actually the 21st century there.

One trip I had a flight where two adult sisters had moved and taken my seat as they wanted to sit next to each other, and didn't seem keen to go back to their seat even though it meant ont of them sitting next to 6 year old DD who has ADHD and I had all her food, toys etc.

Then we switched flights and there was a man sitting in my seat just because he wanted an aisle seat, and again it would have meant him having to take responsibility for DD.

Both times it got to the point where I had to say to them something along the lines of "this is my young child, with ADHD and she's had very little sleep. This bag I have here has all her food and toys in it. Are you taking full responsibility for her during the flight, and will you feed her and entertain her and take her to the toilet!" Before it even occurred to them that taking my seat might be a bit stupid.

We weren't even late onto the flight, they just picked a seat they liked the look of and thought they could argue their way into it.
DH was sitting away from us as we really don't care about all being together, but we did think that dD should have one of us with her.

stinkersmum
Yep, that has happened to my husband before. He is a big bloke and so always chooses/pays for/pre books aisle seat. But the saudi wives aren't meant to sit next to anyone other than their husbands who were only bloody well hiding from their wives and children in the row behind

On one occasion he ended up swapping because he's a gentleman so he was sat next to a child instead, with the child's mum and mil on the other side and husband still in his aisle seat behind them, when the child proceeded to throw up everywhere. We have one of those, dh knows the score, but the actual father was doing sweet f.a.
DH ended up standing at the back of the plane for the rest of the flight until landing. And it was long haul. And the stewardesses allowed it.

because I was like, what did you do that for you numpty?
Saudi men can also find it problematic if single flying but sat next to a woman they don't know. Saudi airlines know all this but have not yet come up with a seating system to help prevent it so that flights could take off on time. Internal flights problems arise in 1 out of 4 of his flights.

Yep, a whole article in the NY times recently about orthodox Jews asking women to move away from them as their religion prevents them from "being in a situation in which they might be tempted" - WTF?

Quote from a female passenger who said that she refused to swap with her husband, who was in the aisle for the same reason as StupidBloodyKindle's husband, because Mr Orthodox's comfort was not as important to her as the comfort of her own husband. Good on her.

caroldecker actually the use of seat numbers to identify passengers after incidents is still important (although not of course definitive). I work in the industry so know this for a fact. It is is also important to have been in the correct seat if you have to be contacted by the Public Health authorities should it turn out that a passenger near you had an infectious disease. So there was no need to be so snippy to magoria.

Afaik theyre not doing it to be gentlemanly or such crap... Its cause women are seen as unclean... The same reason a woman wont have their hand shaken by a male...

I don't get it. Your seat ticket has an assigned seat. Just tell them to move, they don't get to refuse just because they were there first.

I'm a frequent flyer and often someone may sit in the aisle at first but always move when it's clear it's my seat.

There's only once I've been asked to swap, an elderly woman with mobility issues didn't realise the joy of online check in and ended up placed in a middle seat. I swapped then because I'm not an arse but that was really the exception.

Another time my seat was double booked and the others were a family. As I was a single traveller I didn't mind moving (and kindly offered to sit in business out of the way :) while they dealt with the more shouty people who were similarly affected). I stayed there.

Usually I wouldn't even bother getting into justification of why I've booked a specific seat. I have, so that's where I sit.

It's happened to me a few times.

Each time it's been because someone hasn't fancied the middle seat and they have refused to move.

I always get crew involved and say I'm happy to move but only to an aisle seat. I'm always polite but firm - and I don't apologise.

Each time I've been upgraded to business or economy plus.

I'm just flabbergasted that someone could boldly sit in a seat that they know isn't their own assigned seat and expect to be able to keep it!! For those who've experienced this, what did they say as a justification to take your seat?

Coming back from our honeymoon (10 hour flight), we got to our seats to find a couple sitting there. We were young and accommodating then - they appeared to have made a mistake, and we thought it made no difference so told them to stay there. Turned out they'd deliberately sat there for a better view of the film screen.

Now I always sit in the assigned seat. It has happened subsequently in cinema's theatres ; now I assume it is never a mistake

at cheeky fuckers plonking themselves in other people's seats and expecting no-one to mind.

This is probably a good place for me to rant about our seat allocations for our flight on Jet2 next month, which we checked in for yesterday on the day that check in opened.

I don't pay for seats, ever. Its just me and DP and its nice for us to sit together, but we can cope perfectly well sat separately so we wouldnt pay to do so. We wouldnt expect anyone else to move either.

With Jet2, if you dont pay they pick the seats for you at the online check in stage and on the way out, we have 2 next to each other, so fine.

But on the way back, they have given us seats B and E on the same row so the middle seat of each block of 3 (none of the other seats on the same row had been taken yet). WTF . I went backwards and forwards 3 times to give it another shot and while it gave different seats, it never gave us a pair together on the way back, despite half the plane being unbooked and plenty of pairs available.

So by doing this they have left other single seats on the same row and achieved nothing except made it very clear that we would sit separately in the least attractive seats unless we paid.

On previous experience they often swap you for free at the baggage drop in this situation, or if they dont it is quite likely they have given another couple seats A and F, so we will be able to mutually agree to swap and sit in our respective couples.

IamtheDevilsAvocado nothing to do with women being unclean unless they're on their period....

It's all to do with being virtuous. A flash of ankle from underneath your abaya or the mere flutter of a heavily made up eyelash from the slit of a niqab is all it takes for half these inbred lunatics to turn into lust crazy sex pests, and it'd be ALL the woman's fault.

stinkers I think devilsavocado was talking about the ultra- Orthodox Jews that I mentioned, not the Arabs that you did.

www.nytimes.com/2015/04/10/us/aboard-flights-conflicts-over-seat-assignments-and-religion.html?_r=0

however devilsavocado this article would suggest also about temptation, not menstruation. I think the menstruation thing is ref a man's not going near his wife during her period, and the ritual bathing by the woman before he will touch her again.

Jessie ah, you're probably right! Why oh why doesn't MN have a quote function?!

I was recently on flight where we weren't allowed to disembark before the police had boarded and escorted a specific passenger off the plane- my first thought was it would be a real bugger if that passenger had swapped seats with someone else!

We had this coming back from South Africa last year with 9 month old DS.

We'd paid extra for bulkhead seats so DS could have a baby seat. So we're in our seating area getting sorted and a lady comes up to us to ask to sit in one of our seats as she'd hurt her foot....

We politely told her no - but it's the cheek of actually asking. Everyone knows you have to pay more for the 'premium economy' seats but its ok to pay for normal economy and then try and gulit trip someone into giving up what's rightfully yours!