Six years ago I wrote about the brilliant idea for extra space on a plane, especially when tickets are cheap: most airlines will let you buy two seats instead of one. The process, though, is clunky and a little bit different for each carrier.
PlusGrade sells a product to airlines that both makes this much easier, and generates revenue. Their ‘Dynamic Seat Blocker’ adds the sale of an extra seat as a revenue item in the booking flow.
Frontier Airlines now sells this extra seat as an upgraded seating product. You get extra legroom at the front of the plane, and can buy a seat up there with the middle blocked. And the best thing for them is that they sell this middle seat twice – to the passenger in the window and at the aisle!
What I didn’t realize is that United Airlines makes it easy to do this, too. I really do love most things about United’s technology – such a far cry from a decade ago.
Extra Seat for “Personal Comfort”
byu/PurplestPanda inunitedairlines
United lays this out on their ‘seating accommodation’ page, where they talk about it in terms of passengers of size needing more space, but their systems actually offers the option of explaining it’s just for your own convenience or preference.
You’ll even earn miles for buying the extra seat, but not elite qualifying credit (as that’s supposed to be only for the seat in which you fly).
Do I earn miles for my extra seat if I’m a MileagePlus member?
If you buy an extra seat on a United or United Express® flight, you’ll earn miles for both seats. However, you won’t earn Premier® qualifying miles or points for the extra seat. Miles earned for the extra seat will be labeled as “Extra Seat Credit” in your MileagePlus account.
Sometimes, though, the extra seat can get mucked up and a gate agent might give it away to someone on standby.
- Some gate agents just don’t believe you should do this. They go rogue. They believe it’s only for oversized passengers, and see that you aren’t one. And they believe that, morally, space on the plane ought to be used to transport as many passengers as possible.
- More likely, though, the process just gets confused. They need to show the seat as unassigned prior to doors close – their passenger count needs to be accurate.
- If this is done too early they might mix things up, see an empty seat, and clear a standby passenger onto the plane in error. And then you’re probably not going to get that person offloaded once they’ve boarded (for David Dao reasons), and it’ll also be cumbersome working with customer service to get the extra seat refunded too.
Up until 2007 United Airlines used to block middle seats for all elite frequent flyers, only filling them on full flights. They ended the benefit when planes were regularly full, because the number of seats having to be assigned at the gate was unwieldy. Technology today makes this much easier to manage and it would be a benefit I’d really like to see return.
Ultimately one of the better tricks to flying comfortably is when there are cheap tickets, just buy two. You often need to work with the airline (don’t just buy an extra seat in your own name, the airline might think it’s a duplicate). But you can usually buy more than one seat and sit in both. That’s more space for a lot less money than paying for business or first class.
So then you check in for both seats and then no-show at the gate for the second seat? Isn’t there still a risk that the airline will give that seat away to a standby pax when they see they are not full prior to closing out the flight?
Smart move and a good value. Therefore Delta won’t offer it.
I have bought an extra seat for comfort several times. They should come with a slight discount at a minimum because you don’t get the luggage allowance on the extra seat, neither carry-on nor personal item nor any free checked bags. If you are paying full price you should get the whole bundle. On Singapore Airlines I got a slight discount but it was long wait times on the phone to put the deal together. On JetBlue there was no discount but the online purchase and setting up the seats was very easy. I always use part of my extra seat by sitting somewhat sideways to give my knees a bit more room. If the airline was to sell the same seat to two people it could end up with conflict if both people wanted to put some of their things there or even sleep partially in the extra seat, a seat that they each fully paid for. I suppose you could insist on both armrests in an extra seat in the middle (sarcasm.) You could even take the middle seat to sit in and keep the one next to it that you had bought, open.
In response to Johnathan, if you paid for 2 seats separately, you should have 2 separate boarding passes. Then just present BOTH boarding passes at the gate and tell the gate-agent that you’ve paid for both. If the boarding pass is scanned, it would be impossible to fill that seat accidentally or purposely, since the system already shows that middle seat as “occupied”.
Just my guess.
@Lindy
Problematic if there’s an incident and there’s one less soul accounted for than manifested.
The seat for comfort is titled as EXST space and last name for the passenger from my experience. When your boarding passes are scanned make sure that both are scanned. I think it was on JetBlue where I had to remind the gate agent that the EXST boarding pass also needed to be scanned after handing both over. The gate agent may not realize what is happening with the extra seat so it is up to the passenger to make sure both boarding passes are scanned.
If there are two or three people traveling together but on separate bookings, this can be quite a good way to get the poor person’s version of business class in economy class. When it works. But the airlines will often just fill up the “blocked” seats in economy class anyway when they want to do so.
This seriously smacks of angle shooting. If you want more room, buy a seat in a class of service with bigger seats and more leg room. It should be that simple. This “hack” sounds self-aggrandizing., similar to the popular smug overuse of the term “hack” itself. as in , aren’t I “clever”?
Weirdly, UA doesn’t allow this for exit rows, claiming that open seats in exit rows present a safety hazard. I’m not sure how having more room and fewer bodies in the exit row makes it less safe, but no one ever said rules had to make sense. A few years ago UA allowed it as my girlfriend and I would often do window/aisle/open middle in the second exit row if FC was outrageously priced (bonus!- greater effective pitch due to no recline into our row made it easier to work on our laptops). Sadly, this is no longer allowed.
I’ve done this several times; it works.
Usually I’m trying to get an upgrade, but if the odds look long, then I’ll use miles to buy an EXST. One has to call to do this, or it gets mucked up. If the upgrade goes through, then I cancel the extra seat. If not, then I check in for both seats, and scan both boarding passes when getting on.
I hurt my neck/shoulders a few years ago in an auto accident, and have trouble sitting in a tight coach seat for more than ~2 hours. I’m tall, but the leg room in E+ is fine. It’s the ‘shoulder width’ that I have problems with.
I’ll have to check out this new mechanism; wondering if one can use miles for this…
“Weirdly, UA doesn’t allow this for exit rows, claiming that open seats in exit rows present a safety hazard.” Since it is found in the section “where they talk about it in terms of passengers of size,” I think they are concerned a larger pax in the exit row adds risk.
As a taller person who struggles to fit into regular economy and already chafes at the “tall tax” of having to buy economy plus whether it’s cheap or not, I’d find it pretty annoying to know that a small person took that legroom seat just because they wanted some extra space that they could do without.
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Unable to repost because it looks too similar. … space left intentionally blank now (last attempt to leave blank space, the website removed it like an overzealous gate agent on Thanksgiving week.
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