Airline algorithms may be keeping you from sitting together | Hacker News Reader

Airline algorithms may be keeping you from sitting together

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35 pointspseudolus16 comments

I've traveled Ryanair a fair bit. I have never been assigned a seat together with my traveling partner. It is not random, it is explicitly assigning seats which are not next to each other but preferably a row or two apart.

I'm done with Ryanair incidentally because of this and other policies. After adding all the small things, the cost ends up being higher than EasyJet or other more customer-oriented airlines.

In my experience, Ryanair always puts you far away enough that it's obviously impractical to ask someone to switch in the plane, and always puts the person who's booking at the back, so that there's a bigger incentive to pay to join your partner at the front.

Secret tip:. The very last booking to check-in to the plane will always be seated together in Ryanair, as long as the planes full.

Check in closes 2 hours before departure, so if you check in 2 hrs and 10 mins before departure, you'll not only be seated together, but also usually get emergency exit row seats that are normally premium.

If you aren't seated together, it's because the plane isn't full, and the emergency exit rows will usually be unallocated unless someone paid to upgrade to them.

And if the plane is overbooked, you get the additional benefit to stay on ground.

Ryanair claims to be the only European airline that doesn't overbook. Probably they can get away with this as changing your flight costs more than a ticket in the first place

I just never fly Ryanair. I better pay a little more to support EasyJet which seems not to do these and other disgusting things.

I actually love EasyJet because just for extra 20 you can buy front seat and fly cheaper and more comfortable than flag airlines.

And their app and website are second to none. It just works flawlessly. For example, they have a great option to select a different flight (cheaper or more convenient) when you visit the website from the flight search. And they simply never forget my passport data and credit card unlike probably all other airlines.

Long live EasyJet!

Our familly just flew cross country on United and definetly had this experience. Upon check-in our seats were scattered all over the plane and when I tried to re-assign them only a few other seats in the plane showed as available. Upon boarding we discover the plane was literally half full with entire rows empty. The flight attendants didn’t care where we sat :/

I had the same experience with Delta as well. took the risk of not booking seats together because I thought our flight surely wouldn’t be packed (though the seating map showed just 1-2 free seats). turns out even the Comfort+ seats were available and we all got upgraded for free.

This is their new class, “Economy Basic”. You can’t pick seats, upgrade seats, etc.

Similar issue happened to my family on American, seats were all purchased together but on check-in were reassigned. Happened for all four flights round trip, and at least once our 18 month old was assigned an aisle seat on his own, rows away from either me or my wife. It was like pulling teeth to get it fixed every time.

I thought they can't place kids away from their parents.

Did you not pick seats when you bought the tickets? United is not the utter chaos that is Southwest, so unless you bought Basic Economy, you should already have had a seat.

I fly United a lot and get silver status almost every year. I've had them occasionally re-assign me to a middle seat after I reserved a specific aisle seat at purchase. United does the same crap as the rest of the airlines.

I fly United twice a month and the only time I had my seat moved in 20 years was when a 15 year old ended up in the exit row and they had him swap with me. I call BS on your story.

I would disagree that it is easier to assign seats next to each other compared to random. You would have to firstly check which of the untaken seats are next to each other in a continuous row. With random you would just have to pick a any unseated seat.

unchecked sequential is easier than unchecked random. Checked sequential is easier than checked random. Remember, they aren't just assigning people random seats, they are attempting to assign as many paired individual as far from each other as possible to maximize the inconvenience on the part of the costumers that do not pay extra.

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