CF Easyjet over seating

[Booboostwo]

I know you love a good airline seating tale, almost as much as a parking thread.

We booked our holiday six months ago and payed all the extras to have seats together, two adults and two children. The cost was 1,200 euros for short haul return flights, but fair enough we have young DCs and we wanted to sit with them in the extra leg room seats.

When we boarded the plane DH had been moved. The steward was very annoyed, but only because we had not been informed of this at check in. He told us there was no discussion and no changes, DH had to sit where he had been reassigned and that was that. A crew member, working that flight, sat in DH's seat.

I looked after the DCs, I am perfectly capable of looking after my DCs, but I don't want to pay for the priviledge of sitting together and then not get it.

Disclaimer: we've had a shitty year, with various problems and a very recent bereavement so I may be too sensitive over this, but I am fed up.

So basically one of the crew seats was out of operation and the crew member needed to sit in one of the extra legroom seats (presumably to be able to get out quickly/be as close as possible to the original seat).

These things happens but the way they deal with it was inappropriate and of course they should refund (although I don't think you'll get very far with refunding the extra leg room for the people who had it).

One question though, if it was DH who needed the extra legroom why didn't he take your seat and you take the changed one? I appreciate that he may have preferred to entertain the kids than the extra room! We often travel standby and when there are three seats in business (i.e. adult plus two kids) and one in economy we are normally fighting over who gets economy :)

I seriously doubt the crew member particularly wanted the extra legroom - he/she will pretty much only have been sitting in it for takeoff and landing!

I'm crew for another airline and it sounds as if that particular seat was a crew seat and shouldn't have been sold anyway? We usually let people sit in the seat during the flight, but occasionally you get a passenger who kicks off about moving when the time comes for the crew to use it so sometimes you end up with crews deciding to not put anyone there in the first place. Either way it doesn't sound like it was handled well and also you absolutely should get your money back.

If the crew jump seat was inoperative (for whatever reason) then one of the two cabin crew would have to sit in a passenger seat nearest the emergency door. The reason it had to be unoccupied during the flight is so the crew member could be seated in turbulence, decompression etc

The cabin manager could and should have explained this. OP should get a refund but will have to contact customer services.

We wanted to sit together and DH wanted extra legroom, so we all paid for extra legroom. The plan was that I would sit between the two DCs and entertain the younger one and DH would sit across the aisle from the older DC and look after her.

It was NOT the seat closest to the exit, it was two seats (the window and the middle seat) away from the exit as it was an aisle seat. Fundamentally they were being stroppy. Had they been polite it might have been more pleasant, but the steward was rude to top it all off.

You need to be more assertive and ask for a refund. As soon as I arrived at the airport, I would have gone to the EasyJet desk and tried to get a refund for your husbands ticket, or phoned them up straight away.

Why would the crew member have been out in the exit seat? They'd have been out by the aisle so they could get in and out quickly. As happened here.

But the seat was still in row 1? Which seat was it? 1 C or 1D?

OP - have you contacted easyJet yet?

I travelled with EasyJet earlier this year with DS (9). I had paid to book seats together and by the window. When we boarded I could see people sitting in our seats so called the stewardess. She checked their boarding passes and guess what? They had boarding passes for the same seats as us! How is that even possible? Luckily the flight wasn’t quite full and seats were found for DS and me across the aisle from each other. It was fine but no window to look out, couldn’t chat the same and when they brought the trolley along I couldn’t even see him to ask what he wanted.

As soon as we got home I called EasyJet who told me to fill out the online complaints form. I did but didn’t get a reply. I didn’t follow it up as I could see it was just going to be a big headache and I would most likely never get a refund.

It doesn't have to be the seat nearest to th exit to be a crew seat. One of our crew seats is in the cabin in front of the exit, there's a bulkhead wall between it and the exit row...

I would be raging too. As is so often the case, had it been handled better by the crew member a whole load of anger and resentment could have been avoided. I’d def be following it up with customer services but then I’m like a dog with a bone with these things!

It was row 1 so equally easy to get out of all seats. It was C.

I will call them when we're back from holiday. Currently it's 28 degrees and so warm I even dipped my toes in the ocean so I don't want my blood pressure to sky rocket due to easyjet!