Last week a passenger flew American Airlines from Miami to Atlanta. When they boarded flight 2290 on Friday they were told by a flight attendant that someone had urinated in seat 15C on the 12-year old Boeing 737 registered as N890NN.

• They didn’t replace the seat cushion during the time between flights
  
• And they didn’t handle seat reassignment at the gate
  
• But fortunately there were open seats on the flight so they could be moved.

So the passenger just moved one row behind, to 16C. But since that’s an exit row – with extra legroom and entitled to free booze – they were told they wouldn’t be allowed to sit there, “Well other paying customers would be upset if I got an “upgrade” while they had to pay.”

This is a policy, not sure what you’d want us to do?

They could either:

1. Take an aisle seat like they’d had that was “14 rows back”
   
2. Or accept a middle seat closer to the front

American Airlines was being proactive in telling the passenger their seat had urine on it. I’ve arrived at a seat to find that out myself! (Not as proactive as dealing with this prior to boarding, or fixing the problem, of course. And they were on a maintenance delay at a hub so this should have been possible.) And the passenger still had their choice of seats. Ultimately a family moved around to accommodate the man,

Thankfully, a family in the row ahead gave me the aisle seat, while the dad and mom took 14A and 14B, respectively. I have never been more appreciative of a stranger’s kindness, and it’s bonkers they were nicer than the crew? More on that family below…

Why is someone urinating in my seat not an extenuating circumstance that a human can process?

When the passenger complained later, they say they were told to fill out the online form “to request a seat refund and 50K points for the treatment.” There is no universe in which they’ll be given 50,000 miles for this.

To be fair to the flight attendant on board, they would have had to do the safety briefing for the passenger moving into that seat, and they might have already done it for the rest of the passengers seated there. It sounds like there was time for this (due to the maintenance delay) but it doesn’t surprise me that they didn’t want to do their work twice while battles over their contract continue.

I understand that another Main Cabin Extra aisle seat was available that wasn’t an exit row, so the issue may really have just been an unwillingness to make the passenger more comfortable after being inconvenienced by urine.

Years ago I walked into a room at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples. The bed was unmade and there was a used condom in it. The hotel didn’t say “we only have a room over the HVAC, or you can just stay here.” They suddenly had a lovely upgrade available. Frankly they should have done more, but Ritz-Carlton isn’t as good as their branding… so it shouldn’t be surprising that American isn’t, either.