Not to have given up my seat on plane

[Rainbowgoldover]

Just wondering ....

I flew home last night from holiday with a friend.

BA flights , flight out was dreadful, cramped seats , allocated at check in so we had last row next to the toilets ...

On the way back we learnt our lesson so paid to book seats, I booked an aisle seat, friend booked a window seat, flight about 70 per cent full.

The person in the middle seat , asked me if I would move so she could have the aisle seat.

I refused and said no I booked aisle and don't want to sit in middle seat. She said but I want to be near my family in the row opposite. I still politely refued to move.

Cue lots of aggro, she finally got the flight attendants to move her accusing me and my friend of talking over her , we absolutely were not, both had headphones on watching netflix.

If you really want to sit somewhere why can't you pay 23.99 and pre reserve a seat, don't make others feel bad for not giving up theirs ?

A few times when I've tried to book certain theatres it won't let you book if you leave a one seat gap.
And to be fair if I was in seats 20 and 21, and 2 friends could only book 19 and 22, I would happily shift down one so they could sit together. The aisle/window issue wouldn't really occur in a theatre. Plus you SHOULDN'T be talking in a theatre anyway so being next to your friend isn't a huge deal like it might be on a plane when you want to pass the time talking/ sharing snacks or gripping their hand for deal life on take off and landing.
(I am actually on the side of not moving from your paid for seats on planes. However I also don't agree with people leaving the middle seat free.)

I absolutely would not move from an aisle seat in the theatre

We’ve done that! For some reason our 2 seats were bang in the middle of a larger group, so we moved so they could all sit together. However theatres don’t charge extra to book specific seats, only charge more or less depending on section of the theatre. As others have pointed out, some theatres booking systems, do not allow you to leave single vacant seats.

Flying was a lot more expensive then. As somebody up thread has already stated, now you pay less for a flight but more for the extras including sitting next to the people you are travelling with.

No me neither.

I am very claustrophobic though, so that might colour my opinion.

It is annoying when you’re trying to book tickets for a show and all that’s left is single seats miles apart from each other.

I absolutely would not move from an aisle seat in the theatre

Fair enough, you probably have a reason for booking one! And presumably if going with a friend, she doesn’t go for seat 3 in! But theatres are different; seats in the middle are dearer than seats at the edge (at least in mine where there’s no middle aisle either).

They started charging years ago. It’s only free if you have elite status

You weren’t being unreasonable to refuse and she was allowed to ask but I would rather sit next to my friend than have a stranger between us.

Although if you booking those particular seats were in the hope that no one would book the middle seat then that’s the risk you take.

I’d have swapped. For £30 cash 🤣

But that's what I mentioned earlier - has anyone ever heard of someone offering whatever's already been paid for the seat they're requesting?

I haven't myself and when I asked a pal who works as cabin crew she just laughed and said it works in three stages:

Ask "could you possibly ..." with a winsome smile, a short sob story and usually a baby voice
Embroider sob story and insist how important their "need" is
Get nasty

had the same coming home from holiday family with kids ..one was in my seat with is mom and other baby ..so he asked to seat the seat behind next to him ..my wife was in a end seat and next to her was other family member with is kid.. but talking to the dad many in is party of 20+was in there wrong seating this is easy to stop cabin crew just say you must be in your own seat from the start from the plane thanking off ....

BA used to be free to even quite lowly “elites”/those with really basic tier point status within 48/24 hours out from departure until very recently…a small handful of short haul flights a year was enough to get you free choice - now it’s pay or suck up what you’re given.

To address another point that was made upthread I agree this simply isn’t a case of the airlines extracting yet more cash…it’s one way of keeping the basic fare down, or even providing real cheapies for some.

I fly quite a lot and always book an aisle seat because that's my preference. Most people wouldn't actively choose a middle seat so often the person I'm flying with will choose a window seat as that's their preference.

I'm an adult so I don't need to sit right next to someone I know, but don't want to have someone either side of me as I feel hemmed in. So I don't care that there's a stranger sat between us as it's not a social event. I sit and read.

I wouldn't move for any reason. Everyone has the same opportunity to choose and pay for a specific seat.

I certainly wouldn't expect someone who had paid to move seats. The only time 8 have ever asked was coming home on our last trip, my son was very sick in the airport before getting on the plane and still feeling unwell. I only asked as I didn't want him to have to climb over 2 people to get to the aisle for the toilet. Fortunately they were very understanding. I sat in the middle seat and he got the window seat.

I completely agree with this. No I don't think you were unreasonable not to move, but I think you were a bit unreasonable to book those seats in the first place. But that's more of a socially polite consideration rather than a must, given the system has now been created which allows you to do this and this scenario to occur. But you were under no obligation to move having booked and paid for your seat and she equally could have booked and paid to reserve a specific seat.

I agree with others. Clearly the system allows passengers to book exactly the seats they want for a price. This comes with privilege of being socially inconsiderate at the same time.

Individual choice for everyone would be fine in an infinitely large plane, but surely people can see that everyone can’t ‘make the choice’ and book/pay to avoid middle seats, otherwise (apart from groups of three) those seats would become largely redundant and useless to the airline.

Or should airlines remove the middle seat for half the rows and put up the price for just those rows by 50%? After all, those middle seats are so unpopular…

I was booked on a flight last week and deliberately didn’t choose a seat because I was flying alone, it was a short journey and I was happy to make it easier for groups by slotting in anywhere. I was flying for leisure, had no particular needs to consider - why not be a bit flexible if it would help a family, a nervous flyer or someone with mobility needs to pick their preferred seats?

A plane is a very tight space with a lot of people’s needs to consider. Booking an awkward configuration of seats (possibly in the hope of making it difficult for someone else to take the empty seat) really doesn’t help the world at large, however much it might be your ‘choice’ to do so.

but surely people can see that everyone can’t ‘make the choice’ and book/pay to avoid middle seats, otherwise (apart from groups of three) those seats would become largely redundant and useless to the airline.

What do you mean people ‘can’t’? They can and do.

If people want to fly, they’ll even take the middle seat if they have to.

Your implication that solo travellers should just take what they’re given and disregard their desire for an aisle or window seat is pretty discriminatory.

Are you single?

Solo travellers make up 35% of travellers. Airlines won’t want to discriminate against them.

Individual choice for everyone would be fine in an infinitely large plane, but surely people can see that everyone can’t ‘make the choice’ and book/pay to avoid middle seats, otherwise (apart from groups of three) those seats would become largely redundant and useless to the airline.

Of course people realise there isn't an infinite number of seats. That's why you pay to reserve the ones you want. Yes, it means later bookers might not get them; late bookers might not get a seat at all and have to take another flight. That's how it is with finite resources.

but surely people can see that everyone can’t ‘make the choice’ and book/pay to avoid middle seats

There seems to be wilful disregard for the many passengers who get bumped from cancelled flights to their flight. This has happened to me several times. I book and pay to select a window seat over the wing. My flight is cancelled, I am rebooked onto the next flight but I don’t get to keep my seat…oh no..I get whatever the airline gives me and it is almost always a middle seat.

So even though I paid for a window seat, I don’t get what I paid for. Or if travelling with family- we lose all the seats we paid for and we are split up.

You’d think with people having travelled even if their flight has never been cancelled that they would be aware that flights do get cancelled. What do they think happens to the hundreds of passengers booked onto different later flights? Chances are every flight you are on will have people/families who are there because their flight was cancelled- along with their prebooked and paid for seat preferences.

The attitudes these days are grim. I used to feel comfortable asking to swap seats when being split up from my DC or DP due to our flight being cancelled but the number of people who give you ‘stone cold stares’ or think you have fabricated ‘a sob story’ or are ‘cheeky cheapskate fuckers’ is disheartening. I don’t ask anymore. People have gotten extremely rude and the forgetting all about flights being cancelled is part of that.

Hmmmm re cancelled flights. Why is it the other passengers' problem? Take it up with the airline.

I've <touch wood> luckily never had a flight cancelled, but I do remember a really horrible train trip from the Midlands to London. I had a reserved seat at a table as I had a mountain of paperwork to go over for the meeting I was going to in London. The train before me had been cancelled, and when I got to my reserved seat, there was already someone sitting in it, who refused to budge - because HER train had been cancelled. So MY reservation was taken. When I protested, one of her travelling companions called me a string of rude names (they were all dressed in suits, not drunks!).

People can be knobs, sometimes.

It is physically impossible for everyone to pay for and get their ideal choice of seat in the finite space of a fully occupied aeroplane.

Of course single travellers can book any seat that they like. In many ways they are the most flexible passenger for an airline to accommodate. But the OP and her companion were not single travellers - they were flying together and deliberately booked their seats in such a way as to obstruct others from booking either a single seat on that row or a family of four from sitting in a 3 + 1 configuration. Someone in the early part of the thread described it as a ‘dick move’, and I think they are pretty much right.

No I am not single, although sometimes I travel by myself, and describing my post where I suggested that it doesn’t do any harm to be flexible sometimes (if you can) as ‘discriminatory’ really is a bit of a reach!

To put this in another context, I was on an Intercity Train the other day and a couple got on with a small baby, about 6-8 months. They had things for the baby set out on the tray tables and were happily passing him between them in a pair of seats. It was a 5+ hour journey. I don’t think they had twigged about seat reservations etc.

Much later on in the journey (4 hours in) a young woman got on and, despite there being empty seats in over half the carriage, began asking the couple to move as one of the seats was reserved for her.

Yes, ‘seat reservations’, ‘right’ and ‘choice’ were all on on her side but again it was a ‘dick move’ and I wondered if the couple being black had anything to do with it. They were dismayed at her request and really didn’t want to move all their things and their small baby at that late stage in the journey.

I was sitting across the aisle and promptly offered to move so that she could sit in my own seat. I really had no desire whatsoever to sit next to her, but I could see that it would solve the problem. The mum gave me a grateful look when they got off an hour later, at which point the young woman promptly moved into her ‘rightful’ seat.

By all means exercise ‘choice’ but there are times when being a bit flexible (if you can) is the right thing to do.

I have nothing more to say on this topic, apart from that I suspect the days of being able to book a window plus an aisle on the same booking are numbered, as the airlines are likely to put a stop to it sooner or later!

Then the airline should refund you the fee you paid to reserve the seat you wanted.

Yup that’s happened to us 2. Prebooked business class seats, ended up in economy with a partner airline scattered all over the plane 24 hours later. Thankfully lap infant DS and I were given a window, DH and DD aisles, and the middle and aisle of my row weren’t together. So the chap next to me was thrilled to not sit in a middle and next to a baby so happily took DD’s aisle a few rows up and the women in the aisle seat on our row was also very happy to move away from 2 kids and take DH’s aisle a couple of row’s behind. It was pretty stressful though, especially as it was a 10 hour night flight so I didn’t feel ok with my 5YO being next to strangers. And the airline were very unhelpful.