Bizarre seating stuff up ..

[ferntree]

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Wating at the gate to board yesterday, MEL-BNE. Couple sitting close by look at their boarding passes and notice, "Hey we've been upgraded to Economy X!" They hadn't booked it, appeared to have no special needs and were clearly delighted at their gratuitous good fortune evidently awarded to them at thev gate.

Fast forward. I am sitting in 1D as the masses board. Mr and Ms Very Unhappy present boarding passes and demand to know WTF is going on. "We paid for economy X but at the gate when boarding we were bunped back to row 14."

Not happy Jan. Nor would I have been.

Any rational explanation?

 

[AIRwin]

"We paid for economy X but at the gate when boarding we were bunped back to row 14."

Row 14 is still EconomyX if it's a B737-800

 

[henrus]

This is where I think VA could make a small change and solve this problem by offering Economy X free of charge to Gold's 24/48 hours prior to departure.

I too often see people who haven't paid or selected a seat in Economy X ending up there because they're the last spare seats on the plane. United and Air New Zealand do it with no dramas and I hardly doubt it'd end up impacting revenue given those seats were unlikely to be purchased anyway.

 

[Jack_OC]

.
Wating at the gate to board yesterday, MEL-BNE. Couple sitting close by look at their boarding passes and notice, "Hey we've been upgraded to Economy X!" They hadn't booked it, appeared to have no special needs and were clearly delighted at their gratuitous good fortune evidently awarded to them at thev gate.

Fast forward. I am sitting in 1D as the masses board. Mr and Ms Very Unhappy present boarding passes and demand to know WTF is going on. "We paid for economy X but at the gate when boarding we were bunped back to row 14."

Not happy Jan. Nor would I have been.

Any rational explanation?

My guess is there were no available seats left except row 14, and for some reason the lucky couple were not deemed suitable for an exit row (or declined to accept exit row seats). This would then mean 2 others have to be moved to row 14. As to why it was 2 people who paid for Economy X, rather than 2 randoms from the back of the plane - perhaps it was because row 14 is also Economy X, so their system defaults to reassigning people who are already in Economy X.

IMHO, row 14 is not remotely comparable to row 3 (for example), but VA do not seem to recognise that - Economy X is Economy X as far as access and pricing go.

 

[TMP]

This happened to my partner and I on a recent flight. We had booked Row 4, but were shifted back to Row 14 between OLCI and boarding. There was an elderly couple in our Row 4 seats so we understood. Thankfully the seat beside us remained free which helped.

 

[MattA]

Not quite the same as the situation here, but had a weird seating change foisted on us recently. Travelling with wife and 2 kids, I'm in 3 A/B/C with the kids and my wife across the aisle in 3D. Seats selected months out. Wife and I both WP so these were complimentary Economy X, not paid.

Checked in online at T-48 ish and downloaded mobile BPs with 3 A/B/C/D allocated.
Dropped a bag at the airport, he reprinted the BPs and I noticed my wife had been moved back to 4D: queried this (showing the BP in the app and Wallet still showing we'd already checked in and she was in 3D) but "operational reasons etc etc... so a family can sit together". Ok fair enough, it's only one row, first world problems and so on (although there *is* a difference in legroom between rows 3 and 4). Board the plane expecting to see a family with a baby or toddler and surprised to see an older couple in 3D/E/F with their (apparently) adult daughter sitting between them.

As I say first world stuff / not the end of the world and maybe there was some other circumstance about the other group that wasn't visibly obvious, but seemed weird to me that the system would split up one family in favour of another after we'd already checked in (particularly given there were 2x WPs on our booking -- Don't They KWWA? )