Monitor seat assignments. Monitor them often. A recent seating snafu involving a family of seven provides a perfect case study.
A British family spent some time in the USA and had booked their return flight from Denver to London and paid extra for EconomyPlus seating. Upon check-in however, they found their seats had been changed and they were now scattered around the aircraft…including their two-year-old seated alone.
The flight was full and United was unable to get them seated together, though United apparently was able to find seating for two pairs and and a trio. Refusing to board the aircraft without all seven seated together, the family opted to remain in Denver.
Small problem. The DEN-LHR flight the following day was also full and the family did not want to add a connection. And the next day. So the family had three wait two days to get home (during that time, United provided hotel and meal vouchers).
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, the family described the situation and suggested that United staff were unconcerned about leaving a two-year-old and three-year-old surrounded by total strangers on the flight. I find that very hard to believe.
I reached out to United for comment and received this back:
Adjustments made to our customers’ reservation caused an unintentional change to their seat assignments. Due to a lack of seven available seats together on the flight from Denver to London, our customer service agents offered alternative flight arrangements. We re-booked these customers on the first available flight that offered seats together and provided hotel and meal vouchers.
We continue to remain in contact with our customers to resolve this issue.
What Really Happened…And How To Protect Against It
It seems there was a spelling error on the ticket for one of the passengers. That required a correction during check-in at London Heathrow. When the ticket was re-issued with the correct name, all seat assignments were lost since all seven tickets were on the same reservation.
I’m not for one instance casting blame on the family here. But these loss of seat assignments routinely happen when tickets are re-issued. Had the family monitored their seat assignments…or at least known to do so, this problem would likely never to have occurred.
Seat assignments are annoying things. For a variety of reasons, they don’t always stick. You can avoid disappointment by being aware of this and closely monitoring your seat assignments. If you see your seat assignments drop out, re-assign them immediately or call the airline to do so.
It is absolutely an arduous step, but unfortunately necessary one.
CONCLUSION
Whether it should be necessary or not is not the question. It is. This sad story demonstrates precisely why. Save yourself an even great hassle later by checking your seat assignments often, especially when you cannot accept being separated onboard.
My cautionary tale explains my agreement agreement to check seat assignments. I booked two tickets on United five months in advance and booked seat assignments, at that time. I happen to be browsing about two weeks before departure to see where I had chosen my seat. What I had found was that I had a seat and my husbands seat had dropped off completely. I immediately called the airline. There solution was to put us in the last row of the aircraft. I explained when I had booked and where my seats were by the wing in regular economy. There were no longer seats available together in that area. They had changed Aircrafts and did not inform us of the seat snafu. They ended up putting us in economy plus together for no extra charge. Yes it really matters to check. If we had waited till we were at the gate there is no way we would’ve had these seats or even far worse my husband would’ve had no seat.
the lesson isn’t seat assignments, but how we should ignore absolute losers in life where they would prefer ruining their vacation for not getting seated altogether …. on an issue completely self-induced (their own screw up)
UA offers 24hr full cancellation and refund on website (not sure if the rule applies within 7 days of departure), no questions asked, no refund form to even fill out, so if the family bothered checking their ticket, they could easily have done that without even having to call in for name change.
so here you have a family who has looked at the ticket before (cuz they spent the effort to obtain 7 adjacent seats), and obviously looked at it more than once (cuz they care so much about getting seated together), but never once realizing they don’t know how to spell the most important thing to every human.
It’s easier to throw a temper tantrum, get compensated by the airlines the entire time, and then cry to the media about the big bad airlines to get your 15min of fame.
Maybe instead of ruining their vacation they got 2 extra days in Denver with free accommodation?
Cringeworthy victim-blaming response.
“I told the manager that there could have been a paedophile sat next to my two-year-old for all we knew.”
Oh c’mon, you have a reasonable complaint don’t go straight to pedophiles on the airplane!
“She [the United agent] said ‘that hardly ever happens here’.”
Wow. Nice save United
Talk about milking the situation for all it’s worth…where is Helen Lovejoy shrieking about someone thinking of the children…
SHARES is the issue (not the passengers, as HenryLAX unsurprisingly tries to turn the blame to them vs. ever seeing anything wrong with UA).
United is uncommonly bad with wiping out seat assignments – this discussion has been going for years at FT. There is zero rationale for a re-issue wiping out assignments.
I was going to say something similar. I think this is in the code/programming of SHARES. It’d appear there’s no “if this, then that” type of statement that allows for seats to be held for certain circumstances, like a name-change or other non-seat-relinquishing event. Once a seat is “released”, it’s put back into the pool for anyone to claim. I understand why the family was concerned but they immediately lose credibility by pulling the paedophile card. C’mon, folks. But I absolutely believe the UA agents were apathetic, sadly.
Even when you watch your seating assignments, United will change them. On a flight to AKL, our Polaris seats were switched due to a “change in aircraft” and then reassigned to the back of the cabin, despite that we were on a the same 773 that was scheduled to fly the route for days. They flat out lied to us just to accommodate other peoples seat preferences.
This is squarely on United. When the spelling error was corrected, United could have rebooked the party of 7 right back into the back into the same seven seats. They did not bother to do so despite this being a well known issue when tickets are rebooked.
Happened to me on Jet Blue. They put a fat ass useless waste of space Air Marshal next to my young son and punted me from my even more space seat. I cancelled the entire trip. Not sure why United couldn’t have simply kept the seat assignments when reissuing the tickets. Big fail on the part of the ticket agent. Probably cost United tens of thousands when you include the flight delay.
Eternal vigilance in defense of seat assignments is no vice. 🙂
AA switched equipment from 737 to 767 MIA-CUN next January and assigned us two seats in the rear of the Business cabin with no other seats assigned – WTF BS but I got an alert from some app I have (award wallet or expert flyer can’t remember which) and was able to select more appropriate window seats for us.
Stay Alert Situational Awareness
This is mostly UA’s fault as an IT issue (and I’m speaking as a former SHARES employee here…) for never prioritizing an enhancement to change the ridiculous seat dropping on re-issue problem. That being said, I have ZERO sympathy for this family after this publicity stunt and for not owning up to their own mistakes such as the name misspelling, not checking their reservation before arriving to the airport, and refusing a connecting flight (?!) to get home sooner. They make themselves out to be petulant brats in this whole situation.
Hey Dougie Parker-
Hold my beer.
Love and kisses,
Oscar
First, this was clearly United’s fault when the tickets were reissued – but why didn’t the agent check the seat assignments? I’m assuming that is why UA picked up the hotel and meal vouchers, or was it because they broke the contract on the economy plus?
O. M. G. Seat “assignments” are not and never have been guaranteed. Read the fine print people. Pay for E+, get E+ (or a refund). No where does it state that you will be seated together til death do you part. I cannot believe UA gave these idiots hotel vouchers. I guess they figured they’d fight stupid with stupid.
Isn’t the issue here that UA oversold the premium upgrade? Or rather, that when the ticket was reissued, the ticket agent didn’t apply the paid upgrade? The re-assigned seats were not in upgrade section. Now I understand that the upgrade doesn’t constitute a different fare class, but shouldn’t this become an overbooked situation entitling them to compensation?
Actually, it is commonplace for airlines to change seating and put children away from their parents. I was traveling with my 4 year old, rather rambunctious and son on a flight from San Francisco to Denver. They had him seated in a totally different section than me. I remember telling them that whomever he was seated with was in for a very hectic flight but that I was looking forward to the rest. Somehow, they figured it all out and I was allowed to parent my own child…….
Jeez, why all the hassle about seating together? Of course underaged children should sit next to a parent (no options here), and “it’s always better if we’re together” and it’s unfortunate that this happened, but delaying a flight for two days because they all want to sit together? This is a 9 hour flight, can’t they stay apart for 9 hours once in their lives?
https://gloria.tv/video/DADGumHLcheh3pXWf8eoYZabE
“Had the family monitored their seat assignments…or at least known to do so, this problem would likely never to have occurred.”
Had the United software been programmed to deal with this happening, or a human being had bothered to check, this problem is likely to have never occurred.
There, fixed it for you.
You must read what I wrote in context.