Anyone who flies frequently will know the experience of being asked/ told to change seats. Some have even been dragged off the plane.
I’ve been relatively lucky. It’s only happened twice — once my seat was doubled booked and I was offered and upgrade to business class (no argument there), and on the other occasion, I was asked to move to an equivalent seat in another row so some family members could sit together.
But two incidents revealed in recent weeks have made me wonder what’s going on at some airlines.
Natalie Hage, known online as “Your Fat Friend”, described, among other horror tales, that she was moved from a seat she selected to a middle seat, where her size was going to cause more — not less — disruption to other passengers.
Hage noted that she often booked an extra seat for her own comfort, and that of other passengers, but the airline often sold it to another customer, or moved somebody there anyway.
Then came the news that EasyJet ejected 15-year-old Casper Read from one of its flights because it was overbooked.
Who in the world was thinking, “Oh somebody has to get off, let’s make it the unaccompanied minor?”
Luckily Read’s mother had not yet boarded her train home and was able to return to the airport to sort the situation out.
There are many other similar stories out there.
The bottom line is that the seat you chose online and paid for upfront is not guaranteed. There are many variables that could mean you are moved — not least being the aim to get as many people on board as possible so as to maintain and maximise profitability in a cut-throat business.
While airlines often have good reasons for shuffling the passenger deck, it’s clear that many of them should invest more in staff training, in both sensitivity and practicality.
