> Also, nothing is worse than the folks who didn’t pay up ahead of time who bug one, ‘may we switch seats so we can sit together?’
Some of us parents ask that question for your benefit, not ours. Do you want to sit next to my three-year-old?
Some of us parents ask that question for your benefit, not ours. Do you want to sit next to my three-year-old?
Not particularly, no. What I want is for you to purchase the seats your family needs ahead of time, not ask me for them for free.
I know that travelling with kids is really tough. I sincerely sympathize! But it’s not a surprise that a kid needs a seat next to his parents. They know when they bought the ticket that he’ll be coming along, because they’re buying the ticket. They should select the necessary seats then.
Sure, if the airline had to move flights around then 1) they should attempt to preserve group cohesion 2) in extremis folks should negotiate. But for awhile I was getting requests from late-boarders every single time I flew. That’s not an accident: they are flying on cheap tickets and trying to get extra value. I sympathize with that too! But I pay for the value I get, and I don’t appreciate social pressure to give it away.
Your gripe here is with the airline.
In all seriousness I understand your point but I think it's worth considering that you're also applying social pressure.
What happened to "if you want it, then you have to pay for the privilege?" If you want to be sure you aren't next to a kid, just pay for a first class ticket, instead of making other people pay extra for your comfort. You knew your preferences when you bought the ticket, after all. Select the seat you find necessary. /s
The point being that the status quo rolls dice that make everyone unhappy, and there are options for everyone to avoid it by paying extra. Those options are priced by the people creating the situation in order to make a maximally profitable 'pay to avoid this' scenario. I always pay for my family to get together, but blame the airline for making you uncomfortable, not the family.
No, ok never mind, enjoy your flight.
I solved the problem by preferring southwest, but their new CEO is an a*hole, and instead of raising ticket prices $50 a seat is adding assigned seating, removing legroom, charging for bags, adding ticket change fees, etc, etc.
Citation needed. These things happen, and the airline has some responsibility. But there's plenty of "playing dumb". Cabin crew: "You have a basic economy seat, which means you didn't get seat selection". "I didn't know!" "There's a big blue warning that pops up when you do this with a child passenger, making you acknowledge it..." "..."
Also, screw airlines that create a financial incentive to make everyone else on the plane miserable.
The last time I flew Alaska, their seating algorithm needlessly separated parties, then jammed everyone into crowded, no legroom aisles, while leaving the comfortable seats empty.
I know it was intentionally splitting parties because I was flying solo and ended up with a center seat. The person next to me was separated from someone that the airline put in a center seat. A naive greedy algorithm would have swapped me and their companion.
They wanted something like $80 for non-malicious seating assignments.
They even made the flight attendant lie and claim was a safety issue, and the plane would fall out of the sky if people switched rows or were evenly distributed throughout the plane. Presumably, management did this so they could charge you with ignoring safety instructions, which is a crime.
Tough luck then buddy. Have fun with the kids.
There has to be some kind of middle ground here, imo. Nobody wants to sit next to kids. Families don't want to be penalized financially anymore than they already are for providing a benefit to society. We don't need to further disincentivize families and further our declining birth rates. At the same time it's wildly unfair to ask people to switch seats when they've paid for them (or even if they haven't).
You made choices, if you were informed about the costs that's kind of on you.
I don't understand the objection to a middle ground approach here, but if that's what we want then screw it.
Wait, why is nobody having kids?
The world has more than enough people, so we shouldn't be subsidizing having children. Imbalanced demographics can be solved in other ways.