beaupeep

tomassocroccante, "but how many of us can pass gas on command?"

Pretty much anyone I would think, after eating the meal on the plane.

irishface

As a retired teacher, I can tell you that there many who can pass gas at will--usually male of the species.

loopytraveller

Not a giving up your seat story but a not your ideal seat neighbours story similar to the poster who sat next to the larger man without complaining.

On a recent 10 hour plus trip, I arrived at my chosen seat to find my worst nightmare (I'm not a 'child person' and before travelling had joked about no doubt being stuck next to a baby for the entire flight) - yes I was sat next to a 6 month old baby (plus mum!). My first thoughts aren't printable on the forum but then I thought, the flight's full, I can't change seats, think positively about the situation and it'll get you through.

The 10 hours flew by, the baby was very well behaved, quite entertaining, (although I entertained him on take off and landing to distract him from being scared!) had a nice chat with the mother and even held the baby when mother when to the loo.

What I learnt from it: if I had allowed myself to think negatively about it the entire flight, every noise, movement would have annoyed me. I decided to be positive and had a fantastic flight!

I also came away feeling quite happy with myself for helping out the mother so much on what could have been a difficult flight.

sundown

Quite a few years ago I was going to New York from Zurich on a flight with a large group of at least a dozen Turkish men who were scattered throughout coach. They decided it would be nice if they could all sit together and proceeded to attempt to rearrange the entire plane to make that a reality. (They were literally asking entire rows of people to move.) Eventually, the flight attendant came by and shut them down. However during the flight they took to standing in the aisles in a large mob, which got them admonished pretty severely again.

astein12

I've had it happen to me a few times lately... most recently on a small commuter plane (1-1 seating), I found someone in my row 2 seat (only a 10 row plane, but that's not the point). When I pointed out that he was in my seat, he responded 'it doesn't really matter'. To which, I told him, that if it doesn't matter, he can just move to the back.

The other time, it was a PHL to SLC flight in August. 757 booked to the hilt. Turns out there were a large number of large Mormon families fly out to Salt Lake City. The FA's were doing their best to get families seated together (image a giant moving Tetris game). They wanted my seat and (unfortunately) didn't realize that my wife (different last name) was seated next to me. They moved me, but not her (didn't ask me). They called me up to give me a new boarding pass and I pointed out the error of their ways.

The nice thing (being elite helped) was their only real option was to put us in 1st Class at this point.

I still haven't figured out how people manage to book their flights and not pick their seats.

On the other end of the kid spectrum, I was recently on a flight (2-2 seating) when they called for pre-board. As elite, I went to get on the plane and there was a small girl (7 y/o, it turned out) with her grandmother. She was heading home (to her parents) and the grandmother had been allowed to accompany her to the gate (but she wasn't going on the trip). Turns out we shared a row and as we were boarding, the GM politely asked me if I'd keep an eye out for her granddaugter. Upon telling her that I would, she handed me a paper bag and said 'for the trip.' Once on the plane, I realized that she had given me a dozen home-baked cookies. The girl turned out to be very pleasant and we had a good time pointing out all of the landmarks on the ground.

beaupeep

Oooh, astein12, you gave me a good idea. Next time I am asked to change my seat I will say, "Sure, but only if you put me in 1st or business class!"

tomassocroccante

Travelgirl, I have friends ( a couple) from Rome who travel to the US frequently for business but on separate planes - and it's purely for the sake of their children not being orphaned in the worst case. As Oscar Wilde wrote in a slightly less serious vein, "To have lost one parent may be regarded as misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

Similarly, of course, many businesses have a rule forbidding a group of top execs to fly together - should the worst happen, not only would people at the company be emotionally devastated, but the company's survival could be threatened.

It's not a morbid negativity that makes people plan this way - just a kind of insurance policy. And I guess there's a dark side to all of those -

travelgourmet

"I have friends ( a couple) from Rome who travel to the US frequently for business but on separate planes - and it's purely for the sake of their children not being orphaned in the worst case."

Hopefully they never travel in the same car, where their risk of death is much higher

caroline_edinburgh

astein12 : "I still haven't figured out how people manage to book their flights and not pick their seats."

Having a choice of seats in advance of arriving at the airport is a relatively new thing in Europe, at least for economy passengers. It's still not available with all airlines and some which do offer it charge extra. I'll do it if the option is there, but not if I have to pay for it. I think people are not so bothered when it's only a 2 or 3 hour flight.

Even on transatlantic flights there will probably be some passengers who didn't know the option was there, or who didn't have a choice for one of a variety of possible reasons. (Not everyone books their own seats or does it online.)

The last time I flew to the US I booked with United as I'd had a good experience with them before and they offered seat selection. However our connecting flight from Edinburgh to London was cancelled, we missed the connection and ended up with the worst seats on a BA flight - no choice.

Cowboy1968

Last year, on a 3hr flight from Faro to Munich, the FA asked me and my friend (in reserved aisle/window seats, with an empty middle) if we could sit next to eachother in the middle and aisle seat, and give the window seat to a lady from the rear end of the plane.
It turned out that the lady had a bit of fear of flying, and needed to be able to look out of the window to calm down. She did had made reservations for a window seat and got one when she had been checking in. But, bad luck, it turned out to be in the only row that (due to the layout of the rows) did NOT have a window but the mere wall of the plane to look at.

Needless to say, I vacated my window seat for her, and she managed to "survive" the flight without any major problems.

GreenDragon

She obviously needed to be told about seatguru!

Cowboy1968

Seatguru wouldn't have helped her since Air Berlin is not listed there

semiramis

Unless there was a VERY good reason I would not give up aisle seat (I have arthritis and a bad back - so clambering over people to go to the washroom is not something I would volunteer to do). One one occasion though my husband volunteered to give up his seat next to me so that a couple could sit together. The FA even told him that he certainly should not feel any pressure to do so. The woman in question was a VERY nervous flyer (Her first plane flight had been awful and this was her 2nd flight and she really was on the verge of hysteria.) We were both very much in agreement that my husband give her his seat. Her BF was great - talking to her calmly and keeping her distracted during takeoff and landing (the two worst times for her). I really think she would have completely cracked up if on her own or next to strangers. She and her BF were very grateful that my husband gave up his seat and the FA gave him a free bottle of wine.
However I would never consider giving up my seat just for someone's personal convenience because I DO mind.

Christina

I think it is real easy to book a flight and not have seats online. Picking a seat is a separate process, no one makes you do it online.

I have flown from Europe for many years on Eur. carriers and always got seat assignments, so I don't agree that the concept of seat assignments is new in Europe on major flights. She may be referring to one or a few particular carriers she knows that haven't done that (like BA), but many others have for a long time (like Air France).

tomassocroccante

<<Hopefully they never travel in the same car, where their risk of death is much higher>>

True enough. And it's always a heartbreaker to see in the news that 5 members of a family of six perished in a car accident, etc, while one left behind survived.

But I get the instinct to travel separately. I'm not a nervous flyer myself, and clearly we're statistically far safer on board a plane than flying down the highway (where I'm convinced that 20-50% of drivers are either incompetent, tired, or not paying attention.)

Sue_xx_yy

“But no-one seems to have noted potential child protection issues if a child is seated separately from its parents. Would the airline be liable for anything untoward which happened to a child in such a situation, I wonder?"

Given that airlines fly tens of thousands of children over the age of 5 as unaccompanied minors (UAM) every year, which is to say <i> without any parents or guardians being on the plane with them at all, let alone seated with them in contiguous seats </i>, I'm inclined to think the airline legal counsels have thought through all the permutations and combinations quite thoroughly. Especially in today's litigious climate.

This is one of the problems I have with people using safety as a pretext to turn a request for 'families' to be seated together into a demand. Requests are all very well, but one needs to evaluate not only just how old the kids in the family are, but to be realistic as to what contiguous seating will achieve.

Would it achieve better safety?

Consider that UAM service (which is required for children over 5 and up to 12 or 14 years of age flying alone) does NOT involve someone appointed to sit with the child in a contiguous seat. Rather, the airline undertakes to make sure the child is supervised while boarding; is introduced to the FAs; is shown the location of the lavatories and the exits; is chaperoned during connections (where allowed; airlines generally won't allow UAM connections to non-partner airlines and sometimes not at all) and turned over to the appropriate, photo-id'd person upon arrival. In short, the UAM child is seated next to strangers for the entire flight - and hundreds of thousands of kids have flown this way.

Again, in today's litigious climate, airlines wouldn't be doing this, especially with kids as young as 6, if they thought they couldn't answer for the kid's safety during an emergency or anything else, as well as they could answer for them were self-same kid to be travelling with a parent.

That said, I'm guessing that most check-in agents and, failing that, most gate agents, will for various reasons try to seat children under the age of 5 in as close proximity to their parent or guardian as possible. For example, obviously very young children will have to be carried onto and off the plane by their parents. But the point is still that claims that safety is <i> invariably </i> violated if entire families aren't seated together, irrespective of the age of the children, are not substantiated.

Should one switch when asked? There are no hard and fast 'shoulds', there are too many variables, not to mention that people ought to ask the staff, not the passengers, to accomodate such requests. As for the passenger: Switch, or don't switch, but either way one's expectations of what this will achieve should be clear.

tomassocroccante

Oddly enough (or not) the same people who pretty much automatically think they should get to move everyone around on a plane to suit their own needs (with or without children) would likely not try to do so in, say, a Broadway theater. There, at least, they &quot;get&quot; that the person who bought the aisle seat probably intends to sit in it!

travelgourmet

I disagree with regards to the Broadway show analogy, for several reasons:

1) There is much more stratification in pricing for Broadway shows than there is for airline seats. Nobody is saying that one should give up a first seat for a coach seat. We will see how far the airlines get with some of the add-on fees for things like aisle seats, but until they become common place...

2) For a Broadway show, your seat assignment means something. As has been stated, no one here knows why any individual doesn't have a better seat. The airlines change equipment and seats all the time, Broadway shows don't.

3) A lot of these rants are clearly from the perspective of the American airline industry, even though this thread is on the Europe board. BA, for example only allows elites to pre-assign seats on anything less than full-fare. This even applies in business class. And you could fly 200k miles in a year in BA coach and never be elite. Many intra-European flights do not allow pre-assigned seating at all, including some of the major carriers.

Even for long-haul, seat assignments are hard to obtain, often requiring one or several calls to get them, and often they are completely ignored. Anyone who has tried to get advance seat assignments on KLM or Alitalia knows what I am talking about. I'm traveling in business on KLM in a couple of weeks and, despite at least a half dozen phone calls, I am fairly certain that at least one of my long-haul segments does not have seat assignments. I will spare you my rant about how Alitalia disregarded my seat assignments for a flight this year - and both myself and my wife are Skyteam elites, where preferred seating is supposed to be a benefit.

4) I would gladly give up my seat for most Broadway shows. I wouldn't even require another. Just make sure my wife isn't too mad and meets me at the bar when it is over.

tomassocroccante

&lt;&lt;I would gladly give up my seat for most Broadway shows. I wouldn't even require another. Just make sure my wife isn't too mad and meets me at the bar when it is over.
&gt;&gt;

Very funny (to me, anyway). But the same could be said about a plane seat for a trip you didn't want to make.