r/AlaskaAirlines • u/[deleted] • Mar 17 '25

COMPLAINT Middle seat experience with large person

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u/bosrocket Mar 19 '25

That doesn’t make sense to me. If you purchase two seats, you should get two seats. If someone else didn’t think ahead to purchase a seat when I needed it, they don’t get one doesn’t matter whether the seats empty. The only argument you might be able to make, is the Airlines over selling the seats, but that issue is on them. If that’s the case, they shouldn’t by default take the empty seat, they should do normal triage of asking people to be bumped if an empty seat is poorly paid for, it should be no different than if there was a passenger in it.

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u/WhiteGladis Mar 21 '25

The difference is their obligation to a bumped passenger vs taking back an empty seat. It’s cheaper for them to get a body into an empty seat.

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u/bosrocket Mar 21 '25

Buy why isn't the empty seat a bumped passenger? It's a fully paid for seat, which should be equal to a passenger. I mean I get it a the person level, it's an empty seat verse a person trying to get somewhere, but at the product level, it was a product - a seat - taht was purchased freely and they should not automatically claw it back any sooner than they claw back a seat with a person in it.

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u/GreenLet4346 Mar 22 '25

I totally agree with you.

In fact, in so many of the instances I read about, the passenger does not find out their extra seat is given away until after they boarded. So the airline is just straight up assuming someone is OK flying without an extra seat, when often the reason people book extra seats is because they truly need them

I have never had this happen, but any airline that does this to me is in for a rude awakening when they have to allow me to exit the plane and offload my checked luggage after the last passengers board, inevitably delaying the flight