"Will anyone please swap so this family can sit together?"

[kermatu]

But you also can't discount people who get moved onto your flight at short notice because of a cancellation or missed connection. Not always their fault

 

[mviy]

But you also can't discount people who get moved onto your flight at short notice because of a cancellation or missed connection. Not always their fault

That's a good point. Flying home from overseas with a domestic connection if the international flight is late then one will be put on a later flight.

 

[Aussie_flyer]

MEL-SYD/ADL/BNE/CBR is short. Greater than 4 hours, where they serve 2 meals and offer a lay flat bed to sleep is not short. It's not long either. What's that one in the middle called? Medium haul?

But to get back to OP's question, I didn't really answer it at all. It is pretty clear that the answer is "depends". The thread you started certainly covered the whole range of factors that are considered as part of "depends".

Mel-per 2 meals?

 

[DC3]

But you also can't discount people who get moved onto your flight at short notice because of a cancellation or missed connection. Not always their fault

I've got a quite a few AA flights coming up this year. There's no way that any fellow pax will entertain the idea of giving up their seat on those flights for me, is there? Missed connections or not.

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Huh??? You were offering an F seat to randoms in Y? For the love of god, why?

It was never mine to begin with... the words I used were something like 'my seat is further up the front'

Recently I've had people offer to swap with me... carrying an infant some people get scared and want to be as far away as possible.
Works for me since it means an extra shadow

 

[drron]

I've got a quite a few AA flights coming up this year. There's no way that any fellow pax will entertain the idea of giving up their seat on those flights for me, is there? Missed connections or not.

It certainly can happen.We always select seats at booking but it unfortunately is not that infrequent those selections don't stick.The last was on AA and our 4A,C morphed into 4A,D.We tried at checkin to go back but unsuccessful.We don't ask on board.At the end of the flight the fellow in 4F said if I had known you had been separated from your wife I would have gladly swapped seats with her.

 

[sumthinfornuthin]

So you said yes to swapping a seat before being told what/where the seat was? That's brave.

If its like for like, I would consider it but just because someone doesn't like their seat means Im not open to moving, especially as I usually spend a bit of time selecting the best seat for me.

If in J I doubt they are going to promote you "up the back"
Once again is all in not "what is said" but "how it is said" IMHO

 

[Princess Fiona]

I've got a quite a few AA flights coming up this year. There's no way that any fellow pax will entertain the idea of giving up their seat on those flights for me, is there? Missed connections or not.

I get asked to move seats pretty much every sector on AA F. I always pre-select bulkhead front row and there's always some older, entitled upgraded Exp wanting to sit beside their fellow upgraded Exp colleague. Funnily enough the colleague beside me never offers to move backwards in the cabin and put the random beside me.

 

[muppet]

I get asked to move seats pretty much every sector on AA F. I always pre-select bulkhead front row and there's always some older, entitled upgraded Exp wanting to sit beside their fellow upgraded Exp colleague. Funnily enough the colleague beside me never offers to move backwards in the cabin and put the random beside me.

This really irritates me. It's always the freebie upgraders causing the entitlement problem.

RE: the OP

If I am asked in advance - I'll accommodate usually. It's when someone is sitting in your seat or I get a random boarding pass re-printed at the gate - that's when I'm unhappy. It's because of the disrespect I think - the assumption that some other whinger's needs are more important than mine.

 

[juddles]

This is not a simple issue, and as others have stated, it can sometimes really depend on how it is asked.

Where I have a fairly solid opinion is that I believe that it should always be possible to seat family members or couples together. You can bet that if a couple are not seated together, but wish to be, it is not their "fault". Whether it is unfamiliarity with travelling and having two separate tickets, airlines overbooking, late check-in, whatever.

A couple of time while travelling with my wife and two daughters, we have been changed flights due to delays, etc. Each time we were successfully reunited on the plane which required a few people to move around. I am eternally grateful to those people. I have countless times swapped to make the flight of someone else better where it had no real effect on me.

I don't care if it is a 30 minute hop or 16 hr long haul - I want to be near my children.

At the end of the day, I have received far more pleasure changing seats and giving someone a hand, than the detriment caused to me by those swaps.

A particularly memorable example was a couple of years ago flying CNS-BNE. I had a seat in J (1A no less) but a friend was travelling up the back. Not just "up the back", but in the very last row. I asked the staff if I could swap with the other guy so I could enjoy talking to my friend. We did the swap and the bloke was clearly delighted - never flown J. The staff were wonderful with me (and him) and I got a glow that lasted days.

I grew up flying Y. And continued to do so for a long time. My first ever J flight (coincidentally) was BNE to CNS also - I only scored that as my wife worked for Qantas at the time and it was an extremely rare staff benefit. I know that for anyone that doesn't do J the chance to try it is spectacular, whereas I now just get bored and think how the QF 737 is pitiful compared to the A380 J I flew a few days ago.

Maybe I am going OT with this, and believe me, I am one of those that ponders over seat selection months in advance (part of the fun of this hobby), but if it genuinely doesn't put me at a severe disadvantage, I love to help make someone else's flight better.

 

[UP4014]

A cautionary tale for us all: do a nice thing and nice things may happen as a result.

Or no good turn goes unpunished........

 

[dajop]

I don't care if it is a 30 minute hop or 16 hr long haul - I want to be near my children.

Far more willing to swap if there are children, particularly younger children, involved. ( Not so much for adult children ). But less inclined to help out for couples who presume they can have my seat because they are a couple .... having said that, in either circumstance I am willing to (and have) proactively seek a solution using Expert Flyer seat map function (if it works for that airline right up to departure), where crew have not (It does however amaze me that I can go online to a third party website to resolve an onboard seating issue, yet the cabin crew lack either the information or the intelligence to do so themselves. I guess, though to be fair, they are busy during boarding).

 

[andye]

I spent many years unaware that an airline wasn't obliged to seat a family group on the same booking together. I'm sure I wasn't unusual as a then infrequent traveller.

Found out the hard way when all family members split up SFO-LHR many moons ago. What really peeved me was that the check-in (at T-12h) didn't point out that we were split up and so we only found out shortly before boarding.

Much better at this since AFF but now frequently find ourselves on mixture of award and cash tickets and sometimes doesn't 'stick'

 

[coles525]

A few years ago during check in, we found out that we weren't just not seated together, but seated apart more then 5 or so rows!

Obviously we chose our seats in advance (yeah yeah, not 100%), but when we questioned it (before print out), CSR didn't care just saying tough luck.

In the end she changed it to have us sitting together, in cattle class no doubt that we booked.

 

[tuapekastar]

I must be an old softie, because despite posting here that I do spend time choosing my seat and don't like to be asked to swap from it, I have done so several times - once in the lounge and twice on board.

Lounge: Had taken a chance the day before on a rapidly filling J cabin on QF transcon and selected the aisle seat of a side pair, hoping the window might remain empty. Paged in lounge and 'asked' (I don't think they anticipated anything except assent from me) would I move for a couple that wanted to sit together. I said OK (would have been interesting had I not), and as luck would have it, was moved to the exact seat I would have chosen in a full cabin anyway (and it was full). Win!

Onboard #1: AA transcon on a 3 class 762, seated in J in the row behind a bulkhead (mostly not keen on bulkhead seats), in the LH seat of the centre pair. A family (mum, dad, 2 small kids) boards very late. Kid#1 (boy) seated immediately in front of me, Kid#2 (girl) next to me. Mum and Dad further back. Dad approaches me and says (exact words) "you will swap with my son". :shock:
English clearly not his first language (something Hispanic would be more like it) so I gave him the benefit of the doubt that it was a clumsily worded request rather than a demand and swapped. No special service, and no discomfort to me, despite my non-bulkhead preference. All OK.

Onboard#2 Only a couple of weeks ago. A JQ 788 SIN-MEL with 1 AC DEF GJ layout. Me in carefully selected 1D (bulkhead definitely better choice in this cabin than others). Again, late boarders (in fact so late I thought I had scored empty seats next to me ) = family (mum -1E, dad - 1C, grown up daughter - 1F). So I'm next to the females and dad is across the aisle, with me splitting them. Dad asks ever so politely and deferentially if I could swap to 1C so he could sit with his family. I make a very pained expression (genuinely, because i specifically selected and wanted that seat), thought for about 5 seconds, then acceded (with good grace) to the request. The man was extremely thankful to me, and in the circumstances, again, it made no real difference except for the initial annoyance that I was put in a position that required me to give up my selected seat or who knows how things would have panned out. Again, no special service just a very grateful dad.

I agree that we rarely if ever actually know the circumstances behind why something like a family or a couple is not seated together (how I wish I did, it would help the decision making process immeasurably). Late transfer from a cancelled flight, late booking, truly ignorant of how things work, not entitled to select seats, or just 'entitled' and assuming everyone will move on board to accommodate them. Also, the couple who wish to sit together but where one is in a clearly better seat than the other, but it is always the one in a worse seat who wants you to swap with them, rather than your neighbour moving 'back'.

So it is clearly (for me, anyway) a 'horses for courses' - I have refused a couple of swaps before - polite requests, polite refusals (taken in good grace) because the swap has been a 'downgrade' for me in each case - once from 5 or 6C to 29B in a 737 AKL-MEL, once from exit to non-exit, also in a 737. Of course, if it is a demand rather than a request or if someone has taken it upon themselves to make themselves at home in my seat and just advise me (accompanied by a dismissive wave of the hand) 'you can sit where I was' then definitely not going to happen, unless it involved a cabin upgrade for me, which is extremely unlikely - I won't be such an old softie.

 

[maroonone]

I have accoccasionally and denied a few. The thing that gets me is every time it has been requested it has been to a clearly less desirable seat. As it is usually a busy timee and yo get asked out of the blue you need to have your wits about you to counter propose the needy ones take the less desirable choice.

 

[smit0847]

'A lack of organisation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine'

 

[JohnK]

I have swapped before and would do it again. But this has all been in Y... all seats are kind of the same as long as you dont get a middle or lavatory seat.

Avoid middle seats at all costs.

One of the last to board SYD-BNE flight yesterday in row 4D when I was getting ready to sit down. A lady had come up the front to the FA and asked if there was anywhere she could move to pointing to her original aisle seat in row 8-9. When I looked back there was this huge lady sitting in the middle seat taking up the aisle seat as well. The FA told the lady she could sit in middle seat in the row in front after take off. The plane was relatively full with only 6 spare seats.

I am a big person myself but don't understand why anyone would allocate that lady a middle seat when she clearly needs 2 seats. When we were disembarking I looked back and noticed the lady had what appeared to be her husband next to her in the aisle seat and he looked tiny seated next to her. He must have had a middle seat as well as the lady who asked to move was in the row in front.

How did the husband and wife get separated on a domestic flight? Couldn't choose seats? Didn't OLCI? Yet they somehow managed to inconvenience someone who thought they were fine in a forward aisle seat.

Only time I was not happy about it was on a long haul flight CPH-SIN (14 hrs) and I had pre booked an emergency row seat for room and I got moved (not asked to move, I got told to move, with no consideration or compensation) to an isle seat down the back due to a family.

A family was accommodated into an exit row?

 

[Shamrock55]

I am one of those that ponders over seat selection months in advance (part of the fun of this hobby), but if it genuinely doesn't put me at a severe disadvantage, I love to help make someone else's flight better.

Yep this is me too. I must admit i had got very lucky, set an alert on EF and used points to upgrade in the first place to 1A. But the good feeling of helping the lady out was well worth swapping. Plus the wine.

I don't know why but I always like to help the crew out as much as possible. I'm in healthcare now but in younger days i had plenty of hospitality jobs where you're on your feet all day dealing out booze to customers and working really hard, and i find small actions to help the crew out generally goes a long way. I feel like everyone on the plane is "in this together" but I know probably 80% of other PAX don't feel this, especially in J.

 

[Pushka]

But Qantas does last minute stupid stuff with seat allocations. Our seats (my mum, 85 and legally blind) were on same PNR and were seated together in J a couple of hours before leaving for the airport. Get into the lounge and the Lounge Angel asked why we weren't seated together. I said we were. But apparently not now. She looked at mum and sorted it immediately.

We shouldnt assume it is someone else's poor planning that separates people.