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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I still remember the first time I ever really asserted myself as an adult. I was 20 and flying back from Japan and had reserved an aisle seat. A woman asked me to switch with her 12 year old in the middle row ahead so she could sit with him. I said no because there was no way I was spending a 14 hour flight in a middle seat, especially for an older kid. If it had been a toddler, maybe. Everyone around me gave me dirty looks but I noticed no one else offered to switch either. The lady made a big scene and the flight attendant instructed me to give her my seat and then bumped me to first class. It was amazing. I flew back and forth from Japan regularly for several years and that was the only time I ever arrived feeling okay and not exhausted from the flight. But obviously wouldn't happen now with the way flights are over-subscribed.

Anyway, whatever. The man paid for the seat, he wasn't wrong. He could have been kinder if he'd wanted but that's not the same as being wrong. [/quote]

Electing to keep the seat she paid for is not her being unkind. This is not on her. [/quote]

+1000.  [/quote]

We need to start holding airlines accountable. This is ridiculous.  [/quote]

No, we need to hold buyers accountable. Don’t book basic economy and then complain you don’t like the terms of basic economy. [/quote]

+1,000,000. You are given MULTIPLE warnings about exactly this when you book basic economy. Read what you’re agreeing to before entering into a contract.[/quote]

Ok, but this type of situation pre-dates basic economy.  There are all kinds of reasons that families get separated on a plane even when they originally book the seats together.  Flying anything other than southwest gives me anxiety these days because I don’t trust that the seats i book will actually be the seats we get in the travel day.

Also, I wonder if the airlines are getting a bit better about this as the most recent time I booked American, it seemed you had to deliberately select basic economy, whereas in the past I seem to recall that coming up as the default and then you had to “upgrade” to regular economy.[/quote]

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