You realize I’ve addressed this multiple times, right?
Why shouldn’t they buy seats that might lead to their optimal strategy. Why do they owe a stranger the aisle seat?
Not fully booked could mean almost no one is in a middle seat or that say a dozen middle seats are free.
Someone selecting a middle seat has no idea if they are between a loving couple, two sumo wrestlers, or two knockout blondes.
Are you kidding me? Sure, the chance that an aisle seat is snapped up is no greater than a middle seat being snapped up. If no one reserves the aisle seat, almost certainly no one would have reserved the middle seat.
Squared.
You said, “I don’t understand how they are plotting to have no one else in their row”, so I am explaining it to you!
You said that after having said:
“And remember, the ploy is to give you an aisle or window seat. Also not like the subway.”
I explained to you then that that is not the ploy!
I’m going to give up trying to explain the premise of the OP to you now and stop replying to you altogether, as you’re not saying anything that doesn’t require anything more than me copying and pasting my earlier responses.
To those in the ‘dickish’ camp:
If you are boarding a plane, destined for the middle seat (because you booked it too late to get a window or aisle), are you seriously suggesting you would get pissed off when, upon arriving at your row, the already-seated couple says, “hey, you can have the window or aisle if you’d like”?
mmm
No, if they weren’t employing the “hack”, they’d be booked in the aisle and window, because those are the seats they like, and nobody likes the middle. Why would they deliberately take the bad seat when they have an option to do otherwise?
I tried answering this for you earlier by bringing your attention to the opening post. Taber is talking to the OP. The premise is that the couple would want to sit directly next to one another if there is another body in their row, even though it means one of them will be occupying the middle seat. It’s not just part of the premise, couples generally prefer to sit next to one another with no one between them.
Again, I voted “not dickish”.
But I’d be disappointed if I chose an aisle seat three rows further back (to avoid a middle seat), only to realize the middle seat I had passed over was actually an aisle seat opportunity (since being further to the front of the plane is also something I prefer).
Not dickish, but I’d be disappointed.
It’s been my experience that you are supposed to sit in your assigned ticketed seat so, as far as I’m concerned, the conversation consists solely of, “Excuse me, that’s my seat.” I’ve discovered that, if necessary, “accidentally” stepping on feet really helps clear the path.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate middle seats, and the only way I’d have one is if I had booked late and got stuck with one. I’d be happy to negotiate some kind of trade, but that process would only begin AFTER I had secured my ticketed seat.
Wow, I’m seeing a lot of rude behavior in this thread, and it’s not in the OP.
It may or may not have been. There’s probably a 30-50% chance the couple would have booked middle-aisle and not middle-window, judging by various surveys of window vs aisle preferences. Plus, you would have had to have been looking exactly at the right time for those seats, because if there was a window-middle seat combination and everything left was window-aisle, that aisle seat would have been snagged up. So odds are quite low that you would have been able to get it.
So a lot of planes have a 2 seat row and a 3 seat row, is it any more jerkish if you did this hack on a plane like that? i.e. you could choose a window and aisle together but instead take a chance at more leg/elbow room?
And everyone is focusing on the idea that only one other solo passenger is involved. I think this strategy messes with groups of three trying to sit close together and couples who might want to sit across the aisle from each other.
Good point, the single traveler that would have accepted the window or aisle seat next to the couple then could very well select a window or aisle seat elsewhere on the plane rather than accepting a middle seat. At the time of booking he has no idea a couple holds the window and aisle seat and would give him one or the other (pending negotiations.)
I’m moving to “dickish.” The couple doing that adds a bit of chaos to the seat reservations. If the couple wants to sit together then they should book 2 seats next to each other, and not leave a space in between hoping that it will stay empty.
IMO most people booked in the middle would accept and be somewhat grateful for a window or aisle seat if offered.
But the problem is how that situation was created. The dickish part is the couple wanting to sit together but not reserving seats next to each other. The couple selecting seats that way potentially adds chaos to one or more seat selections after theirs, and it could affect anywhere on the plane. It would be more of a problem when the flight gets full or nearly full.
To me it’s like a game of chess or Go, the move by the couple to leave an empty seat between them can affect all the rest of the “moves” in seat selection for that flight.
It’s not a big deal overall, it’s just one flight. But somewhat dickish and selfish IMO.
Granted, I just started flying a few years ago, but I’ve never seen this. Which airline has this?
OK, this is one situation I hadn’t considered in which it may edge into the slightly dickish category. I personally still would not be bothered by it, but I can see the argument here.
Not sure how commonly used this model is but scroll down for Air Tran’s 717 seat map:
And I guess forget I said “a lot of planes” because I really have no idea, only that I’ve been on planes like that. Just curious if that situation changes the dickish level.
Air Tran is defunct but it looks like Delta flies a 717: SeatGuru Seat Map Delta
I think so. When there are two seat configurations, we always take that rather than bet on an outside chance of three seats to ourselves. It’s probably more playing the odds than trying not to be dickish though.
I would first be confused. “What? Why?” (Possibly with a dash of ‘since when was this not an assigned seat flight?’)
At that point it would probably depend on their answer. “Because we want to sit next to each other” would probably not fly, because my confused response would be “Then why are you sitting so far apart? You guys picked your seats before me; you had your pick.”
I’ll just pause a moment to presume that they’re not going to frankly admit that they were trying to use a dickish trick to entice people to give them extra foot room, so this conversation would probably stretch on a bit longer. And this is all happening while I’m trying to get to my seat. If they’re actually preventing me from getting in, by blocking my way into the row, this is going to get ugly pretty fast - not only do I not like standing around, I’m also blocking the aisle. So that debate would get cut off. And once I’ve got past and jammed myself into the middle seat I’m not likely to try and pry myself out again, not with any sort of stupid argument that as much as admitted they had been trying to game the seating.
So that tactic wouldn’t work well on me.
One tactic that might work would be to, upon my approach, take one look at me, gasp in horror, and exclaim, "Holy shit! You’re gigantic! Could we maybe entice you to sit in the aisle seat, so your giganticness will be able to leak out into the aisle some rather than pour over onto us? (Alright, I’m not quite that gigantic, but I’m quite certain to extend my arms onto both armrests and my legs are unlikely to properly fold up into my allotted space.) If they took this approach, and did it with sufficient delicacy not to piss me off, then they could probably convince me to swap for the aisle seat by convincing me that it wasn’t a premeditated scam going awry but rather an unexpected bit of bulky new data that is inspiring this flagrant disruption of the formally agreed-upon seating arrangement.
So this tact could work, presuming they were fast enough on their feet and reasonably politic about things. This tactic would eliminate the flimsy “they’re giving you your choice of any of the three seats! Be grateful!” argument, of course.
Presuming that after this initial interaction they leave me to my own devices after this and allow me to get involved in my book, I may not even notice that they know each other and were running a scam.