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Comment by gehwartzen | Hacker News Reader

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 :/

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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.

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.

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.

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