One More Pitfall of Flying

Since I got home from Chicago, I've been looking into the how/why of my United Airlines Economy Plus seat apparently being sold out from under me.  I was reassigned to a seat in the middle of the last row of the plane.  I couldn't believe my eyes, looking at the diagram of the plane.  I hyperventilated, and reached for the phone.

It turns out that airlines don't have to guarantee you a specific seat, even if you choose it when you pay for it!  Oh, yes! Your ticket entitles you only to some seat on the plane.  They can reassign you at will.   So even the comfort of knowing which seat you'll have: it's gone.

If you buy tickets other than directly from the airline, it's more likely you won't get to sit with your family/partner/friend.  Apparently, families who buy from discount websites are finding their children aren't seated with them, even pre-school children.  But this can happen if you deal directly with the airline, too.

A travel agent I know told me that airlines will bump passengers if an elite status flyer with that airline wants your seat.  She's seen that happen most frequently with United Airlines, and she thinks that's what happened to me.  Economy Plus was full, and someone with a higher status prevailed and snagged my seat.  She assured me that someone at the airline made the change manually; it was not a computer error. Diabolical!

But I was vulnerable to this manuever because I cleverly bought aisle and  window seats for Jerry and me, hoping the middle seat would be empty and we'd have more room.  Bad idea.  The airline viewed me as a solo traveler, my travel agent friend said, and solo passengers are more likely to have their seats reassigned.  All the flights I've taken recently were jam-packed, so there's no point in trying this anyway.

What to do?  Advice from online travel gurus is to check your seat assignment regularly online, every week or so,  before you fly. If I hadn't checked my seat assignment two hours before printing my boarding pass, I wouldn't have seen that the seat I bought three months earlier was gone, and I wouldn't have been able to wrangle with United reservationist to get it "reinstated." Which took an hour.   Oh, boy.