Tag Archives for seats.
The Biden administration is initiating a rulemaking to require that airlines seat families with children age 13 and under together for free. Generally speaking they already do, under pressure earlier in the administration. In fact, DOT has a dashboard showing this and since it’s part of airline customer service plans it’s enforceable.
One Mile at a Time says ‘pulling strings’ to do this is ‘creepy’. But would he even have needed to ‘pull strings’ with a connection as the son of the airline’s by then deposed founder, in order to do this?
Southwest Airlines announced plans for redeye flights, premium seats, and assigned seating but left a lot of questions unanswered.
They don’t know all the answers yet! But during the carrier’s second quarter investor call on Thursday they provided more information and filled in several gaps, as well as shared other useful tidbits, that flyers need to know about these changes and the airline’s business.
Delta often claims to have been the first airline to fly with business class suites, but that isn’t true. Qatar Airways was first, and their QSuite debuted seven years ago and remains one of the best business class products in the sky. The overall Qatar Airways business class experience is better than first class on airlines like British Airways and American.
A woman found herself in the middle of somebody else’s travel hack. She was assigned a middle seat on her flight, between a couple who had booked the aisle and window seat in the same row.
They didn’t offer to trade. So the woman was stuck sitting between a couple – and they talked to each other throughout the flight, and passed food and drinks back and forth. They did this over the middle seat passenger’s laptop.
A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight fsnapped a photo of an entire row of seats blocked off using a neck pillow and two bags. The passenger who did it wasn’t even seated in the row but nearby, saving those seats for family.
I have a bit of an idiosyncratic preference for the bulkhead seats at the front of the cabin when I’m flying business class. And most people would disagree. In fact, in many cases the first row of business class is going to be unpopular when it’s right behind the galley and right behind the lavatory.
When American Airlines sells you something and doesn’t deliver it, their position is often that they get to keep the money. If it’s part of a ‘bundle’ like what is sold as a Main Plus fare, and they don’t deliver parts of the bundle, you don’t get any money back.
Southwest Airlines doesn’t pre-assign seats. Once you board you can take any open seat. There’s no rule against saving seats for other passengers. And it’s perfectly acceptable to subtly discourage other passengers from sitting beside you, though if they want to take the empty seat next to you they can. In this Hunger Games world of Southwest Airlines seat selection there’s basic game theory to defend and expand your turf – from saving seats, to boarding early, and figuring out whom you may want to sit next to you (if someone has to).
One passenger decided to tell a lie to keep the empty seat next to him open, on a flight that cabin crew announced was completely full. As the plane filled up, he told each passenger who eyed that middle seat next to him that it was taken and his wife was just in the lavatory. He tells this to a flight attendant, too.
He sticks to his story even as the last passenger, looking for the last seat on the plane, tries to find a seat – walking up and down the aisle of the aircraft because he was told that ‘last seat’ was already taken.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
