Bought airline seat to Celt, could t use it but it was taken anyway …

[agieselbow]

Genuinely, was I being unreasonable…

Flew home from abroad last night. Had bought my daughter a ticket but she needed to leave early. I decided to keep the ticket rather than sell on so I could have two seats: sleep etc. it was a late night flight and I had a three hour car commute thereafter.

just as plane was about to disembark , a man sat down beside me. I explained that he had the wrong seat . He simply said it was his in a rude tone.

The flight attendant saw this and hurried over to tell me that this man was’ actually a pilot’ and needed the seat. She further explained that he was off duty but a pilot nonetheless and again she was taking the seat.

she saw from my face that I was not happy and apologised as I explained , again, to both, that I intentionally held onto the seat knowing my daughter would t be travelling.
The man sighed/ tutted and was generally rude through the flight if I needed to go to the bathroom and in the end, he just got up and walked off the flight when we landed without even a thank you .
Am I being unreasonable to be very pissed off here???
I feel like emailing the airline and asking for a ticket refund.
I think that if he had been mannerly and pleasant, I wouldnt be so cross but the entitlement and obnoxious manner got my back up .
AIBU?

So many typos! Apologies. Basically I couldn’t edit the heading but essentially, decided to keep an airline ticket that couldnt be used by my daughter but the seat was take by another person despite me explaining that I wanted to keep the unused seat that I had paid £250 for.

Normal and will.be in the T and Cs. Flights are routinely overbooked assuming passengers won't fly. Its not yours, it's your daughters and she didnt show up so it will be reallocated.

I assume that your daughter had no checked in. If you don't check in before a certain time, your seat can be given away to someone on standby. Technically if your daughter did not check in then it was not her seat and he was free to sit there.

Why were you expecting a thank you from him at the end of the flight?

Even if I paid for it, it is assumed not to be mine? Surely this can’t be right ?
so regardless of how many seats a person buys, even if not in their name, the airline is entitled to take them? Wouldnt overbooking be their issue to sort rather than take prepaid seats that were not filled?

I expected a thank you as the man took the seat that wasn’t his and knew I had been annoyed as I had paid for and held it for myself.

Erm I'm not sure you know what overbooking means. It's done in purpose to fill no show seats.

You might not like it, but, yes, that are the rules on all airlines that I know. They neither know nor care who paid for the ticket - the ticket is for the named passenger.

It’s normal in air travel and happens frequently - you must be aware that they overbook flights precisely for situations like your daughter not turning up - so they don’t end up flying half empty planes.

But you were the one who is wrong, not him. The seat was not yours.

Imagine you bought two tickets for a train journey, but your travel companion didn’t turn up.

Would you tell all the other passengers that they couldn’t sit in the seat next to you because you’d bought two tickets?

Airlines work the same way - you buy the right to travel, not the actual seat.

Why would he think its your seat and not his. He'll have been reallocated the boarding card not you. It wasnt your seat! You were sat in your seat.

If you wanted the other seat, you would have had toask the airline in advance to change it to your name. Your DD was a no show, so the seat was released.

You did give the pilot a funny story to tell his family when he got home though.

Surely if you pay for the seat it’s technicality
yours to use ? When I went to the bag drop, the lady asked is a member that f the party wasn’t travelling and when I told her that she was not , I explained that I was going to keep her seat anyway as I’d paid for it . She just shrugged. Anyway, iTs a lesson to me! I will sell the seat in future of it happens again, thanks

You bought a passage from A to B for two people, not two seats. If you'd bought one seat for yourself plus an extra seat for comfort it would have been sold in a different way and would be yours. When someone no shows for a flight their seat is released for purchase or to standby passengers. Airline staff can stand by for flights for leisure reason or for duty travel to reposition to another flight or attend a meeting for example. He didn't owe you anything, the seat was never yours.

Yes, you misunderstood what you'd bought. You paid £250 for the right to make the journey on that plane but that isn't the cost to rent the seat for the journey. I imagine even if that factors into the cost seat rental would only be a fraction of the cost. Same with other forms of transport. As a regular traveller by train it's very annoying to pay the same price as someone else but not get a seat while they relax comfortably but you can't get a refund because your ticket is for the journey not the seat. You can't pay twice and refuse to let someone else sit down in the spare seat either.

Many airline tickets are not transferable so you'll need to check you can legitimately do that.

In what world can you “sell the seat to someone else?” As far as I know the seat goes with the identified purchaser/holder and can’t be transferred.

For the 72nd time. No. No matter how many times you ask or how you phrase it. No.

And, few airlines let you sell a spare ticket. EasyJet does (or did) but you pay a name change fee.

The seats are sellable but the name change, it transpires, costs £100 per ticket. Quite a common practice actually !

Unfortunately as others have said because your DD didn't check in the seat was reallocated to the pilot.

What you should have done is changed the name on the ticket to yours and then when you checked in they would have allocated the 2 seats to you only. Same when someone buys 2 seats for extra space due to weight/size, they have to have the 2 seats in their name and they check in the 2 seats at the same time.

If the flight has been quiet you could have got lucky and had the spare seat without having to change anything but your flight was obviously full and there was people on standby

The seat was not yours. It was your daughter's. She did not use it, so it was given to someone else.

Honestly you’re lucky these days to get a seat, even if booked, paid for and checked in. As my sister and I found out when we were bumped off an over booked flight. Got compensation, later flight etc but was still an enormous PITA!

What would be the point of selling a £250 ticket if you had to pay £100 for a name change?