NYTs Etiquette - "I Refused to Switch Seats on a Plane. Twice. Was I Wrong?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't read the article but I have seen the issue come up on various boards. In my opinion, being a family or traveling with kids doesn't entitle you to special treatment. When I travel with my family I pay to pick seats, early check-in, extra space - whatever I think we might need. If you're not willing to pay for that then you can't afford the trip. Other travelers have also paid for those services and they don't owe you anything.

I would like to live in a society that gives a little more grace and has a little more patience for society’s very young and very old (and their caretakers). Kindness is a value I love to see in companies and individuals alike.

That's nice. But not how life works. As a family of 5, traveling just costs more for us and a lot of things are less convenient. It is what it is. We can't book a single hotel room, because max occupancy is usually 4 so we always need 2 rooms. We have to rent bigger cars. if we go to a theme park someone has to ride alone when seating arrangements are 2x2. So we pay to pick our seats because we want to sit together. As a former single traveler it was nice to be flexible and travel more freely. Eventually the nest will be empty and I can get back to it but for now we just deal with it since it was our choice to be family of 5.

I still think people should be kinder to those with young children with them, including you, even if you don't want the person at the hotel to be kind and say "you know, the baby doesn't have to count as a 5th person in your hotel room if you just want to set up a pack n play for her in your first room". Because for most people, that would be a nice, helpful, kind, dare I say normal, thing to say and do.

I would never expect people to move up out of their seats. There's being nice then there is entitlement. I had babies, I know what its like and insisting that a family must sit together if at least 2 seats can be found is good enough. The family of 3/4/5 don't all have to sit in the same row. The parents can switch and take turns if need be without disrupting so many people. But expecting people to break the rules to accommodate your family? GTFO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with flight attendants grabbing people and asking them to switch is that there are lots of hidden disabilities that people have that they shouldn't have to disclose. I have kidney issues and need to be close to a bathroom, etc. I also remember being pregnant and therefore wanting to be close to a bathroom (still in the morning sickness stage) and traveling with colleagues. I shouldn't have to disclose my pregnancy in front of my colleagues in order to keep the seat that I paid for.
You have no idea why anyone purchased a particular seat and you have no right to ask or to ask them to switch it.

I agree. I have arthritic knees (good and bad days) but I never disclose it though I hate getting up and down and never take an aisle seat if I can help it....always a window. I'm always the last one off just in case my knees slow me down. Not dealing with the 'you're moving too slow' crowd.

Absolutely agree with this! It's nice to switch if you can (sometimes it isn't the family's fault they had to board without seats together) but no one should be guilted into switching or explaining why they don't want to. Also airlines should DEFINITELY refund the seat choice fee if they ask someone to move out of a preferred seat.

[Anonymous]

Some of this could be solved if airlines simply flipped the narrative on pricing tiers. Instead of "paying extra to sit together", make that the baseline price - and offer a discount for agreeing to accept whatever leftover seats are available after everyone else has booked. Families with young children may not be eligible for this discount, that's ok.

Getting separated when an airline rebooks is harder. It's easy to say that they should just put all families together. But if they are being added to an existing flight that is a nearly full, there may not be a lot of good options. Of course they "shouldn't" rebook like that, but reality is that flight schedules change all the time for various reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't read the article but I have seen the issue come up on various boards. In my opinion, being a family or traveling with kids doesn't entitle you to special treatment. When I travel with my family I pay to pick seats, early check-in, extra space - whatever I think we might need. If you're not willing to pay for that then you can't afford the trip. Other travelers have also paid for those services and they don't owe you anything.

I would like to live in a society that gives a little more grace and has a little more patience for society’s very young and very old (and their caretakers). Kindness is a value I love to see in companies and individuals alike.

"give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

Plan ahead if you can when flying if you need seats together is the life lesson.

[Anonymous]

I remember when my oldest was a baby, I bought TWO seats, specifically so I could use one for his carseat. The flight was oversold, and the airline attendant brought on a standby person and expected me to give him my second seat, where my baby was. I pulled out both tickets, told her I had PAID for those seats, and I wasn't giving them up. She loudly said, "Well, I guess she's not going to help us out today," and escorted the standby passenger off the plane. She then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the flight, asking everyone around me what they'd like to drink, etc. - but not me. I couldn't believe how arrogant she was, and I wrote an email to United afterwards.

If you pay for your seat(s), you should not be expected to move for someone else's convenience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious question: why would a family want a bulkhead? I have a big carry-on bag full of kid stuff: snacks, games, tablet, etc. In bulkhead you can’t have it under the seat in front of you so where do you keep that bag? In the overhead and have to keep getting up to get stuff in and out? Kids are short and don’t need the extra legroom, either.

This only applies to international flights, but bulkheads have infant bassinets. You can't get the infant bassinet in any other seat.

And I will say, the bassinet is only useful for VERY small infants. So there's a very small window of time babies would use. I think once babies can roll (around 6 months) it's not recommended. I only flew with one of my kids as an infant, but she was 10 months so we just flew in a normal seat together.

[Anonymous]

I switched once when asked, embarrassingly, for an elderly woman to sit with her daughter. I had paid extra for the extra leg room seat and they refused to refund my money. I will never do that again. It was embarrassing to be asked in front of everyone so I felt pressured to say yes, and I was young - in my 20's then. I wouldn't have minded as much if they had refunded it but the airline refused after repeated requests in writing.

[Anonymous]

I remember when my oldest was a baby, I bought TWO seats, specifically so I could use one for his carseat. The flight was oversold, and the airline attendant brought on a standby person and expected me to give him my second seat, where my baby was. I pulled out both tickets, told her I had PAID for those seats, and I wasn't giving them up. She loudly said, "Well, I guess she's not going to help us out today," and escorted the standby passenger off the plane. She then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the flight, asking everyone around me what they'd like to drink, etc. - but not me. I couldn't believe how arrogant she was, and I wrote an email to United afterwards.

If you pay for your seat(s), you should not be expected to move for someone else's convenience.

Yes, this sounds like my experiences on united. Awful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I remember when my oldest was a baby, I bought TWO seats, specifically so I could use one for his carseat. The flight was oversold, and the airline attendant brought on a standby person and expected me to give him my second seat, where my baby was. I pulled out both tickets, told her I had PAID for those seats, and I wasn't giving them up. She loudly said, "Well, I guess she's not going to help us out today," and escorted the standby passenger off the plane. She then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the flight, asking everyone around me what they'd like to drink, etc. - but not me. I couldn't believe how arrogant she was, and I wrote an email to United afterwards.

If you pay for your seat(s), you should not be expected to move for someone else's convenience.

Yes, this sounds like my experiences on united. Awful!

It's outrageous that they expect one paying passenger to sacrifice their seat for another. It doesn't matter if it's a baby, they should have just made the announcement that the flight was oversold and asked for volunteers in exchange for a voucher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of this could be solved if airlines simply flipped the narrative on pricing tiers. Instead of "paying extra to sit together", make that the baseline price - and offer a discount for agreeing to accept whatever leftover seats are available after everyone else has booked. Families with young children may not be eligible for this discount, that's ok.

Getting separated when an airline rebooks is harder. It's easy to say that they should just put all families together. But if they are being added to an existing flight that is a nearly full, there may not be a lot of good options. Of course they "shouldn't" rebook like that, but reality is that flight schedules change all the time for various reasons.

They do have this. You do not get your seat until you check in at the gate. My college age son just flew this way. It was a very cheap fare. Luckily it was not a full flight and they sat together but they were prepared to take random middle seats.

[Anonymous]

We’ve booked seats together that have gotten changed right before flight…. And then had to pay a premium to fix it. This is why I always check in early too. To know as soon as possible if it’s gotten bungled by the airline. It really does happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s behind a paywall so I can’t read the article and comment. Please remember not everyone has a subscription to NYT. These posts with links that people can’t see are annoying.

If you're already hitting the paywall, it means you've read your articles for the month.

Subscribe you cheap f#ck. Good journalism isn't free.

NYT is not good journalism. Why would I pay for it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I remember when my oldest was a baby, I bought TWO seats, specifically so I could use one for his carseat. The flight was oversold, and the airline attendant brought on a standby person and expected me to give him my second seat, where my baby was. I pulled out both tickets, told her I had PAID for those seats, and I wasn't giving them up. She loudly said, "Well, I guess she's not going to help us out today," and escorted the standby passenger off the plane. She then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the flight, asking everyone around me what they'd like to drink, etc. - but not me. I couldn't believe how arrogant she was, and I wrote an email to United afterwards.

If you pay for your seat(s), you should not be expected to move for someone else's convenience.

Yes, this sounds like my experiences on united. Awful!

I have had the worst experiences on United. I was once traveling back from London with my daughter who was about 20 months at the time, which I had done several times before. She was still young enough to be a lap child but I paid for a seat because it's too cramped to have a child on your left for that long. Even though I'd done this before without issue, on this particular flight, the flight attendant refused to give my child a meal. He said had to make sure he had enough meals for all the adults first. I was livid and said, but we paid for a seat for her so she should get a meal, but that apparently didn't matter. He brought me a pouch of applesauce instead. A 20 month old eats real food! Luckily, I had brought a few snacks, but that is a long time to be trapped on a plane and denied food. I complained to several of the other flight attendants and finally after I had given her my meal and he had fed all the other passengers, he finally brought her a meal because there were some "leftovers."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s behind a paywall so I can’t read the article and comment. Please remember not everyone has a subscription to NYT. These posts with links that people can’t see are annoying.

If you're already hitting the paywall, it means you've read your articles for the month.

Subscribe you cheap f#ck. Good journalism isn't free.

NYT is not good journalism. Why would I pay for it?

Most likely the same reason you pay for FOX on cable.

[Anonymous]

I’d give up my seat if someone * really* needed it but if I paid for it for a reason I’d politely decline. IF it seemed like not a terrible big deal. I’d be nice: I’m so sorry, I bought this seat because I’m 6’3’ so I’d like to stay in it if I can”. But if some little kid starts crying, yeah