I usually fly Southwest. I love Southwest. I can get good seats just by being early instead of being elite, bags are free, etc. etc. If they flew non-stop to New York, I’d never fly another airline.
But the travel time with the stop would be almost 9 hours, compared to 5.5 on another carrier. So I recently flew Continental.
Their policy now, it seems, is to have 1/2 the coach section be the premium seats. And they are, of course, not available for booking until check in (unless you’re elite). I booked my flight a month ago and there were no available seats. I was told to book at check in. I checked in online, and I had two options: one was to pay $89 for a premium seat, the other was to go to the airport with no seat and get assigned there. I was concerned about being bumped, and since it was the last non-red eye out that night and I had a business meeting, I bought the upgrade.
It was the Tuesday after labor day, so it was kind of a tourist flight. There were 9 babies on my flight. Many of the families, unable to book seats together (or maybe even at all, like me-- and not wanting to pay an extra $400) were scattered all over the plane, particularly in the elite section. It was chaos, with all these people trying to arrange seat swaps with the passengers around them so their kids weren’t sitting alone. The flight attendants are on the PA ordering people to sit in the seats assigned, but no parent is going to leave their 2 year old is some seat between strangers-- and certainly none of those strangers wanted them to do that. It took forever to board, and we were 45 minutes late on push back from the gate. The flight was late and they had to take a bunch of people with connections to other parts of the terminal by those little golf cart things.
The exact same thing happened on my flight back, 3 different families and several couples bartering for seat swaps. (And people moving up the aisle against the traffic stream, bags and all, while doing so). Again the flight attendants were ordering people into their own seats. Again no one was listening. Again we were late. The weather was bad and we missed our take-off slot, so we were really late putting down. If this is how it’s going to be in general, 9 hours with a layover in Chicago is starting to look nicer to me.
Why do the legacy carriers insist on making these seat assignment trainwrecks?
Because it’s a moneymaker in the short term but provides no long-term planning? I fault the families mostly. If you have an individual seat, put one adult or one older kid there, don’t have the toddler by himself. I’ve seen parents try to be near their kids who are over 10; give them some earbuds and a $50 ipod (less than the price of an elite seat, mind you!) and they’re just fine.
But I have long since resigned myself to miserable travel conditions - especially around holidays - when small children are involved. Gone are the days when parents gave their kids a little benadryl; now Molly and Hanna and precious Jacob have to make everyone else miserable the whole flight. I crank up my tunes and pray to god it ends soon.
That said, I’d gladly pay $90 on a flight of 2.5 hours or more to be rid of the screaming hellions.
I assume they figure that people who want assigned seating at booking will pay the extra: hence increased profits. But people are cheap, especially these days.
They want you to stay in your assigned seating in case of an incident or emergency; they want to be sure who was in seat 17C.
You answered your own question every time you had to hold shift and hit “4” when writing your post. Add in a little lack of foresight and corporate laziness and you get the problems you had.
My last experience picking seats on a plane was with Aer Lingus. It was shockingly easy: they showed a diagram of the plane, and the available seats were colored one color and the already-booked seats were colored a different color. You clicked on the seats you wanted and that was it. It seemed too good to be true, but really it wasn’t any more complicated.
Even if the airline was greedy, they could have done the same thing with little pricetags on certain seats or something.
The downside of this system is that there will inevitably be many single seats left over because people will always want an “empty” seat between themselves and the next people.
This is partly a selling point, because Aer Lingus’s main competitor is RyanAir (aka RyanScare, RyanArse or “Bunch of Bastards”) where the policy is: “For your convenience [yeah right] you may pick your own seat when on the plane”, which results in a scrum in the terminal and pandemonium on entering the plane. There’s no way they would be able to match heads to bodies in the event of a crash because they have no idea who’s sitting where.
I myself stay at the back of the line on that kind of airline, and just take whatever seat is free - it’s usually right at the back near the toilets and emergency exit, which suits me.
I worked for one of the “legacy carriers” for 20 years, separating only when they closed the reservation office in Los Angeles 5 years ago.
Back then, only the exit rows, bulkheads, and a few aisle seats were “reserved” for elite, and only because it was a perk of being elite, not for the money. There was an override computer entry that allowed us to pre-assign those seats, particularly to seat travelers together when only one was “elite.” I used the override frequently, not for the intended purpose, but to get families together or because I refused to seat someone in the middle when they’d booked months ahead. I can’t image what a HELL it is now that they’re charging real money for those seats. I’m sure there’s some sort of accounting that would keep the phone agents from overriding too often. Oh, wait. You have to PAY just to book with a real-live person these days, too!
With the state of air travel these days (no meals, charging for baggage, charging for advanced seat selection or “preferred seats”) it was really a godsend that I got out of the biz.
That’s the way Southwest does it, although now with a little bit more organization (you can pay extra to be farther ahead in the line to board). It can be a little chaotic, but I’ve never seen a scrum.
Either way is better than “Let’s spin the Wheel-of-Seats!” method employed by more expensive airlines.
That sort of system is fairly common. I’ve flown JetBlue most recently, and they have something like it. Their system will flag the seat if it’s an extra-cost one (front of the plane or exit row) but I was able to get a seat in Row 7 without paying extra.
I misread the title of this thread and thought it was ''Airline Boarding Policies are designed by monkeys", which is just as true as their seating policies. I fly two to three times per month for work, so quite a bit, and I have to say I’ve just about had it. In fact, the only time my flights have ever left or arrived on time is when I’ve flown SouthWest. Oh, thank Thor and his father for SouthWest. No seat assignments, no classes, no boarding debacles, and no delays; just board the plane and sit wherever you want. Heaven, if there were such a place.
Every other airline? Just kill me now. Every flight is late leaving, and most are late arriving. Boarding is an absolute nightmare. Many airlines board by zone, with Zone 1 being, generally, closest to the front of coach. Guess which zone they call after 1st class and elite? That’s right, Zone 1. So you have a bottleneck of passengers bunched at the front of the plane trying to stow their luggage and locate their seats, while passengers with seats rearward are stuck unable to board and get to the back of the plane, which is EMPTY. It makes no sense at all. Airlines used to board back to front after 1st class. A five-year old knows that boarding back to front is more efficient. I simply don’t get it. Oh, and don’t think you’ll get a straight answer if you ask about it. The attendants either don’t know, or become terse with you for having the temerity to waste their precious time.
Anyway, sorry for the hijack. I just got back from a trip last week, am preparing for another one, and am already seeing red.
I get it’s a money making scheme, and I actually have no problem with that aspect. But they won’t let you book the premium seats (HALF of the available seats) until right before the flight. Why not allow people to upgrade at booking? If people want to assure they sit together, they can pay extra. (When I bought my upgrade, exactly 24 hours before the flight, there were plenty of seats, but no two together anywhere on the plane. There was literally no possible way for these parents to prevent the seat-swap nonsense. You can’t blame them. The mom in front of me said when she booked her tickets 5 weeks in advance, there were no available pairs, and she had a 3 year old. They were given middle seats scattered over the plane.)
I mean, it’s fine if it works, but it’s obviously creating chaos at boarding. It is not acceptable when it makes the flights late. It makes the flight difficult for everyone involved, passengers and crew. And everyone in their assigned seats isn’t going to happen when you’re splitting families.
The nickel-and-diming is annoying, but I understand why. I wish you could just do it all at once-- I had to input my card info 4 different times (book the flight, buy the upgrade, and two sets of baggage fees).
My family flies a fair amount (3-4 times per year), especially considering all of our flights are for pleasure.
We also haven’t flown anything but Southwest in the last 15+ years. We have their system down pat, and think it works great. Their typical turnaround time at the gate is about 20 minutes.
Thankfully, Southwest boards families with small children early in the boarding process (not first, but before approximately 2/3 of the passengers). This is good, because these are the people most likely to cause a problem if they can’t get seats together. If a flight is full, and they’re in a hurry, they tell the last third or so of the passengers to sit in the first empty seat they see.
It sounds like we’re going to be in for a rude culture shock when we eventually end up going somewhere they don’t fly.
In the old “sensible” way, pax in row 35 would stash their oversized wheelie trunks in row 6’s overhead bin, rather than have to lug the monstrosity down the aisle to their row.
I’d welcome an airline that has no overhead bins at all. If it’s on wheels, you check it. The industry treats us like commuters riding some sort of long-distance subway as it is. Might as well throw a bone to the people who check their bags and can move freely about.
Obsidian and Onomatopoeia? I’ve got a couple of cease-and-desist letters here for you two from the Monkey Anti-Defamation League. Apparently, the monkeys feel that comparisons between themselves and airline policy makers are demeaning.
The last time this came up, someone claimed that the reason they stopped boarding back to front was that people would stick their bags in earlier open baggage compartments, leaving the later people to have to walk the full length of the plane looking for the open compartments in the rear of the plane, then return to their seats, which is even less efficient than boarding front to back.
This makes a certain sort of sense to the individual. If you get to the back where your seat is and the luggage compartments are full, then your’e semi-screwed. You’re not going to be able to move forward against the flow until almost everyone has boarded. At which point you get to be the guy who has his carry-on checked because the overhead bins are all full. In addition, if you take up the spots at the front and people seated up there have to come further back, you’ll get off the plane faster, since the people who have to wait to get to the back for their luggage will stay in their seats.
It’s a tragedy of the common luggage area.
So the airlines board from the front now. Another solution would be to assign overhead luggage space per seat and actually hold people to the size of the smallest compartment on their trip, but that would probably piss people off even more.
I’m sure a monkey with a gun will be by shortly to enforce those cease-and-desist letters. I always prefer being able to select my seat. Just don’t select the wing. It’s windy.
Yeah, monkeys could certainly do a much better job and they have plenty of experience. Just go to any zoo and you will see lots of monkeys picking their seats.
That’s really weird – just a couple of months ago I had a Continental flight from Newark to Los Angeles, and I was able to select my seat on line ahead of time. Could they have changed the process in just a few months?
I love me some Southwest. I haven’t had to fly in years, but doggone, was it nice when I did. Of course, I’m always *ALWAYS *too early, so I always had the A ticket and I was usually in the front of the line. And in all the flights I took (dozens, because I earned at least 3 freebie flights) I think we were late once.
I suspect it depends on which flight you’re taking and when you booked. I flew on Continental just a week ago and while a good chunk of the plane was elite-only, I still managed to get a seat assignment I was perfectly happy with well in advance. I even changed it fairly recently after they started the reserved seat business and still managed to get a good seat. But that was a transatlantic flight that isn’t usually 100% full that I booked 10 months ago. I imagine it would be different if you were booking a popular flight wholly within the US at the last minute.
Then again, I also seemed to have been smiled upon by the travel gods because all my flights landed early and I had an empty seat next to me on all the legs. Maybe I just got lucky…
Ryanair also allows priority boarding for an extra fee. The one time I flew with them, boarding was a little chaotic, as you say, but I don’t think I’d describe it the same way jjimm does. It worked out all right and the plane left on time.
I also flew once with easyJet, another European ultra low-cost airline. Boarding was delayed by about an hour; I think the plane hadn’t arrived yet. I thought I was among the first people in line and would be able to choose any seat I want, but we were shuffled in the bus from the terminal to the plane and I lost my great spot in line. I think I still got a good seat.