Did you read the Washington Times today?

[El_Kabong]

@Paul_in_Qatar

They had an article about Ann Coulter losing her seat.

It pointed out this basic truth:
“If airlines were Democrats, the passengers would be black voters.”

Well, that’s quite the bizarre and idiotic statement, but then there’s this:

[QUOTE=Ann Coulter, being a horse’s ass as usual]

More: “So glad I took time [to] investigate the aircraft & PRE-BOOK a specific seat on @Delta, so some woman could waltz at the last min & take my seat.”

…

There are more — many, many more, comparing Delta employees to prison guards, stasi police officers and such, and calling out the airline for giving the “dachshund-legged woman” her prepaid seat.
[/quote]

So, what’s up with the gratuitous insults directed at the other passenger? The issue is with the airline, no?

I have some sympathy for passengers who get jerked around by the airlines, but in this particular case, the person involved is such a relentless public asshat that I’ll just mark it down as karma and move on.

[Caffeine.addict]

I don’t read the Washington Times and haven’t since it was delivered for a short period of time to my childhood home in the 80s.

Delta is somewhat in the wrong, but they moved her to seat with the equivalent leg room, and they refunded her upgrade fee. She got moved from an aisle to a window. I personally prefer aisle seats but as long as the leg room is the same, it would fall in the category of irritation.

Where Coulter went off the rails is she took pictures of the passenger who got her seat, insulting her dachshund -like legs. Her rant about $10,000 of her time is kind of insane. Apprently she originally booked a window seat before changing it to an aisle seat.

[Robot_Arm]

@Caffeine.addict

Apprently she originally booked a window seat before changing it to an aisle seat.

She spent $10,000 worth of her time researching which seat was best, and got it wrong?

[Shodan]

@bobot

I don’t get it.

I think the idea is that the Democrats can take black voters for granted. Waddya gonna do - vote Republican?

Likewise with airlines - if you don’t like it, walk. Admittedly not one of her best lines.

Regards,
Shodan

[Dewey_Finn]

If her time is so valuable that just booking this ticket cost her $10,000, why can’t she afford a personal assistant to handle such chores for her? And if it is that valuable, why isn’t she just flying via a private plane? Surely the time she’d save in avoiding having to go to the airport early would be more than made up by the increase in income.

[mhendo]

Ann Coulter is a raging asshole. I wouldn’t piss on her if she were on fire, and her whining on this issue is out of all proportion to the airline’s offense. But i still think she has a little bit of a point here.

@Chefguy

Fine print. They reserve the right to move you anywhere on the aircraft, refuse your boarding altogether, or cancel the flight. Sure, you can be outraged, but in the end you’ll either do as you’re told or get off the plane.

I think we all understand that, but as a number of recent events have shown, the flying public is getting increasingly angry that a company they have paid money to can treat them like this. It is one of the few industries where you can order and pay for something quite specific, and where the provider can unilaterally decide not to give you the thing that you’ve already paid for. And it’s made worse by the fact that, by the time you’re denied the thing you paid for, you’re already at the airport and really have no other choice except to bend over and take your screwing.

Delta itself said, in its official response to Coulter’s tweets:

We are sorry that the customer did not receive the seat she reserved and paid for.

It’s a measure of the airlines’ special status that they can admit, in the first line of their statement, that they sold something to a customer and yet did not deliver it, and we accept this as just something you have to live with.

@VinylTurnip

If she really was moved to a seat with less legroom, her complaint is more justified, IMO, but I don’t know whether that was the case. According to a Delta spokesperson, she was moved from an aisle seat to a window on the same row. If it was the same amount of space and she was just freaking out about not getting an aisle seat, then she can go pound sand.

Coulter appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to discuss the incident. She claimed that the seat she was moved to DID have extra legroom, but not as much extra legroom as the one she was removed from.

If the Delta statement that i linked above is accurate, it went something like this:

[ul]
[li]Coulter originally booked seat 15F, a window seat.[/li][li]Less than 24 hours before the flight, Coulter changed her booking, and reserved seat 15D, an aisle seat.[/li][li]When she arrived, she was told that she could not have seat 15D, because it had been allocated to another passenger.[/li][li]She was placed in seat 15A, another window seat, but on the other side of the plane.[/li][/ul]

It’s not clear to me why seat 15F or seat 15A would have less legroom than seat 15D, but emergency exit rows are sometimes laid out strangely, so i guess it’s possible.

None of this is a very big deal, i don’t think. She wasn’t bumped from the flight; she ended up in the same row, and in a seat that was basically identical to the one she originally booked; and she still had an exit row seat. And as i said, i think that the amount of effort she’s put into whining about this is orders of magnitude beyond the tiny inconvenience that she suffered.

But i also think that there are quit a few people who are only taking the airline’s side because it’s Ann Coulter, and if some more popular public figure had experienced the same issue, there probably would have been an outpouring of popular support, especially given how much heat the airlines have been taken lately for stuff like this.

@Okrahoma

She did as she was told, that was not the problem, was it? The question is, why was she asked to move from the seat she bought and paid for, and someone else was put in that seat?

They may have the right (in fine print) to do whatever they want, but they better have a good explanation for it or they will be rightfully criticized. And snarking back at criticism is a ridiculous image for a company.

Actually, she didn’t do what she was told, at least not initially. She admits herself, in the Fox and Friends link that i provided, that she was told during boarding about the seat change, but that she went and sat in the seat she wanted anyway.

“It was before boarding, I had picked out the seat I wanted. I was in the waiting area, the boarding area, for 90 minutes,” said Coulter. “And then as I was boarding, the ticket agent snatched the ticket out of my hand and said, ‘No, we’ve given you a different seat.’ And I said ‘Why?’, and she said ‘Emergency.’”

Coulter said she went ahead and sat in the seat she booked anyway. A stewardess soon told her she’d have to move for another passenger, but couldn’t give any explanation as to why.

“[The other passenger] was not an elderly person, was not a sickly person, a very tall person,” claimed Coulter, who is six feet tall. “It’s been three days now, and Delta still hasn’t given an explanation, much less an apology.”

As others have noted, posting a picture of the woman who was given her seat was just mean-spiritied and idiotic. This woman was, presumably, given the seat by Delta with no knowledge of Coulter’s booking, or of anything else related to Delta’s efforts to book the plane. And her claim that the effort of booking was worth $10,000 is asinine, but also right in line with her usual level of histrionics and exaggeration.

[dtilque]

@Paul_in_Qatar

If she could bill at $10,000/hour, why would she be flying coach?

One of the mysteries of our time, I guess. She’s spent far more than an hour’s time bitching about it.

If you were writing an opinion piece about another airline incident, why would the first examples that pop into your head be Black voters and Democrats?

Because the Washington Times is the Fox News of print journalism. It’s part of their job description to take swipes at Democrats, even when it makes no sense.

[Jophiel]

@mhendo

Ann Coulter is a raging asshole. I wouldn’t piss on her if she were on fire, and her whining on this issue is out of all proportion to the airline’s offense. But i still think she has a little bit of a point here.

She got her seat moved to a pretty comparable seat and her fee refunded. That warrants a “Oh, that kinda sucks, I guess” from a friend or family member not a multiple Tweet screed calling out other passengers and basically going ape.

She’s basically the same as someone flipping out and screaming in a McDonalds because they forgot you said “no onions”. In the words of The Dude, “You’re not wrong Walter, you’re just an asshole.”

[Robot_Arm]

@Paul_in_Qatar

If she could bill at $10,000/hour, why would she be flying coach?

I don’t think she said $10,000 per hour. She said she spent $10,000 worth of her time to select the seat. It may have taken her six months.

[Sunny_Daze]

First let me say that I generally hate Delta with the fire of a 1,000 suns. Do you know what I do about that? I don’t fly on them.

Delta should have asked so the party could sit together, unless kids were involved or a disabled person. We don’t know about the other people, because Delta isn’t discussing them. Nice of them, actually.

Coulter wasn’t harmed. She got a seat similar to the one she originally booked, it had the same amount of leg room, and she just comes off looking like a whiny child. As I say to my children all the time, this isn’t a “get mad” situation. At most, this is an “irritated” situation.

My question here is: if her issues with the airline go back years, as they apparently do, why is she still flying on them? There are other carriers.

[Inner_Stickler]

@Shodan

I think the idea is that the Democrats can take black voters for granted. Waddya gonna do - vote Republican?

Likewise with airlines - if you don’t like it, walk. Admittedly not one of her best lines.

Thanks, I appreciate the explanation.

[VinylTurnip]

@mhendo

It’s not clear to me why seat 15F or seat 15A would have less legroom than seat 15D, but emergency exit rows are sometimes laid out strangely, so i guess it’s possible.

Maybe she was planning to extend her gargantuan clodhoppers out into the aisle.

@Sunny_Daze

My question here is: if her issues with the airline go back years, as they apparently do, why is she still flying on them? There are other carriers.

Yeah, all she needs to do is fly one of those airlines that never reassigns seats. There must be dozens!

[BeeGee]

I feel sorry for the poor SOB who had to sit next to her the whole flight. I bet that was fun.

[Jophiel]

@Sunny_Daze

As I say to my children all the time, this isn’t a “get mad” situation. At most, this is an “irritated” situation.

Seriously. If she was my kindergarten-aged kid, I’d have been saying “This is maybe a 2 or a 3 but you’re acting like it’s an 8…”

[shiftless]

I chuckled out loud, BeeGee.

I still can’t wrap my head around why airlines move a person from a properly paid for seat once they have their butt planted there, even if it makes them a few bucks. If it takes Ann Coulter to raise enough stink then good for her.

[Jophiel]

@shiftless

I chuckled out loud, BeeGee.

I still can’t wrap my head around why airlines move a person from a properly paid for seat once they have their butt planted there, even if it makes them a few bucks. If it takes Ann Coulter to raise enough stink then good for her.

They told her about her new seat assignment at the gate. It wasn’t her seat when she planted her ass there and threw a hissy fit.

[Chefguy]

@Sunny_Daze

First let me say that I generally hate Delta with the fire of a 1,000 suns. Do you know what I do about that? I don’t fly on them.

I’ve never had a problem with Delta.

[Dewey_Finn]

@mhendo

Coulter appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to discuss the incident.

I’m amazed that Fox News would waste time talking about this. On the other hand, it lets them avoid talking about the fiasco that is the Trump administration.

[mhendo]

@Sunny_Daze

First let me say that I generally hate Delta with the fire of a 1,000 suns. Do you know what I do about that? I don’t fly on them.

…

My question here is: if her issues with the airline go back years, as they apparently do, why is she still flying on them? There are other carriers.

This is a silly argument for a variety of reasons, especially when it comes to a discussion of airlines.

First, most of the major domestic airlines in the United States have, over the past couple of decades, treated their passengers like cattle as a matter of course. I’ve never had any problems on United Airlines, but i’m not naive enough to believe that this could never happen, because i actually read the media, and listen to what other people say about their travel experiences. And, conversely, if i happened to have a bad experience with United, i would not be under any illusion that switching to Delta would be likely to make things better.

These choices are constrained even further, for many people, by the fact that there really isn’t that much choice when it comes to airlines. Even the large airports don’t give you that many companies to choose from, and there’s a significant number of airports that are served by only one or two carriers. If you’re going from Milwaukee to Chicago, that might not matter too much because you can take a train or a bus or rent a car, but that doesn’t work so well if you’re going from Seattle to St. Louis, or from Phoenix to Detroit.

@Dewey_Finn

I’m amazed that Fox News would waste time talking about this. On the other hand, it lets them avoid talking about the fiasco that is the Trump administration.

Well, Fox News is a 24-hour news channel, and they’ve got a lot of space to fill, just like the other shitty 24-hour news channels. Fox and Friends, the show that Coulter appeared on, is sort of like a conservative idiot’s version of the Today Show; it’s basically a chat show that invites a lot of conservative guests, and is hosted by some plastic-faced mouth-breathers.

[jasg]

I am surprised that she flys commercial - harpies have wings, don’t they?