Hello from 37,000 feet above the ground enroute from Los Angeles to Stockholm! The SAS flight has been incredible (more on that tomorrow) but a friendly warning if you are flying SAS and concerned about your seat assignment: check it and check it often.
I booked this trip last fall and when I did the entire business class cabin was open. I am traveling with my uncle and booked us the “throne” seats 2A and 3A in the new SAS 1-2-1 business class cabin. For photographic reasons, I always prefer a window seat when I fly.
Upon checking in today, we were notified that our seats had been changed to 2D and 2F, a center section of two. Why?
“Oh, we thought you would like to sit together.”
Oh, did you consider that maybe we just wanted two window seats?
Seems like it was LAX ground staff who did this and though I did not raise my voice, I was informed that there was nothing that could be done to reverse this.
So who got our seats? A couple of Scandinavians who did not necessarily appear to be VIPs, but who knows.
The pictures onboard have not turned out as well, but they are still decent and at least I could converse with my uncle during the meal, so there are far worse things that could have happened.
But if you are concerned about your seat assignment, SAS may be one of those airlines that likes to move seats on you so check early and check often.
I find most international carriers proactively try to seat you together cause they assume you prefer to be with your party (Americans tend to place more emphasis on individual choice, personal space and being left alone haha). I have been re-seated on Lufthansa, BA, Etihad, and Avianca either to put me with my group or to allow another group to sit together, and I’m ok with it as long as it’s not a worse seat than my original (i.e. aisle to middle). I do see your point about how it can affect photo taking 🙂
great to know…and that’s crazy! I’m surprised they would just do it on their own. I would have thought they could have at least asked at check-in.
do you write the airline in this type of situation and let them know or just let it go?
I had the same thing when I flew with my wife in Austrian Airlines Business Class in their staggered configuration. We were told they moved us as a “courtesy” and there were no open seats to move into. We love each other, but don’t need to sit together on each flight, and chose window seats intentionally. Oh well.
How did you choose / book the seats? I just redeemed Aeroplan miles for 2 seats. Got the booking reference but couldn’t find the seat option on SAS website.
I called the call center.
I booked, via Aeroplan, seat 2a on SAS SFO to CPH, a couple of months back. Still another two months until my flight, I checked up on my seat assignment and it was “magically” moved to 4e (one of the least desirable!). A much quicker award routing came up, via Lufthansa, so I switched.