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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I don't have much sympathy. People have gotten the airline system they've asked for by basing their purchasing decisions solely on price. The natural end result is that things that were previously included in that airfare get removed and because paid extras in this race to the bottom.

Personally I don't even book an airfare where I can't pick my seats as part of the booking process.

Now if the EU wants to create a passenger bill of rights of sorts that disallows this and other practices (eg charging for checked bags) then fine. But know that those charges will just go back to being included in the ticket (ie higher fares).

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I don’t see how your comment addresses the allegations in this article. The airlines allegedly use an algorithm that detects family members on a flight and deliberately seats them separately to try to upsell them to manual seat selection. That has nothing to do with any passenger making a purchasing decision based solely on price.

> airlines allegedly

Researcher says it looks more than random. Airlines are saying it’s random. Until someone finds proof of airlines biasing randomisation algorithms against families this is all speculation.

“Europe’s biggest airline never admitted to changing the way seating was allocated, insisting there was no change and saying that those who don’t pay to choose a seat are ‘randomly’ assigned one.”

I have no ability to determine the validity of the allegations. I was only commenting on the relevance of the previous comment to the allegations mentioned in the article.

It was a diplomatic wording. I've flown cheap EU airlines many times with another person (20+/year). The first time I didn't seat with other passengers is after the "pay more to guarantee sitting together" was introduced.

This is not even matching surname. If you don't pay, you're virtually guaranteed that the other person on your booking sits somewhere else.

Of course it does. The reason Ryanair can sell seats for not much above zero is that other customers are paying more. People choose Ryanair because they offer those cheap seats, not because they like the service.

Or because they're the only airline on a given route. Both Ryanair and Easyjet have the only available flights between many places. Even if I did want to pay more for something less terrible, I can't.

What's worse is that in practice what this means is that those family members will badger other passengers to swap seats with them in order to sit together which can frequently lead to disgruntlement and argument.

I have very little sympathy for people that expect me to just swap seats with them. Their failure to plan and prepare adequately does not constitute a crisis on my part. Especially if I did go ahead and pay the $15 extra or whatever for that particular seat.

This doesn't really apply to the cheapest airlines. You can't choose your seat there anyway. Unless you book the exit row, you get an assigned place, not a "particular seat".

Air travel isn’t always a luxury expense. Some people can’t afford anything except the cheapest ticket. It’s rather dismissive to blame them instead of the large airline companies who want to make a profit. Just because you can buy a more expensive ticket for better seating doesn’t mean everyone can.

Previously included benefits becoming paid extras is one thing, but deliberately creating an artificial hindrance which is a paid extra to resolve is quite another, especially when it's obviously a grave compromise of passenger safety.

> The natural end result is that things that were previously included in that airfare

I think this one is very different to other cases. Other additions normally actually cost money - more baggage/weight does translate into higher cost. More space in the seat does mean higher cost.

On the other hand the seating arrangement is purey exploitative. It wasn't didn't cost anything and splitting up groups actually cost the airline some development time to create.

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