NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/travel/air/6290

Text File | 1992-12-29 | 3.1 KB | 61 lines

Newsgroups: rec.travel.air
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnewsk!cbnewsj!jis
From: [e-mail] (jishnu.mukerji)
Subject: Re: Questions on Boarding Passes
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 15:38:52 GMT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Lines: 49

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (scott.d.brenner) writes:
>
>I agree that possession is .9 of the law.  If I found myself in the situation
>you describe, where someone else is in my seat and has an identical boarding
>pass, I would raise hell with the airline.  I would do everything I could to
>cause a fuss and delay the pushback.  If the airline wants to treat me like
>a bus passenger, I can act like one.  IMHO, if I'm paying several hundred
>dollars to travel with them, I expect an airline to treat me with respect.  I

Amazing! Just because of a slight mixup in seat assignment you are
going to delay and inconvenience 200 others? How many bus passengers
do you know who delay the departure of a bus because they did not get
their preferred seat on a bus? The proper action as a bus passenger
would be to take whatever seat you get and be happy with it no?:-)

I have found myself in a situation where I was already in a seat when
the other person assigned to the seat came in and where the seat that I
was assigned to was already occupied by someone else. In both cases
both the boarding cards showed the same seat number. In both cases one
of us had not checked in at the boarding gate or checkin counter at
the airport.

In both cases we told the flight attendant what had occured. In one
case the other gentleman was happy to move to another seat. In the
other case I moved to another seat because the mother with a baby who
was the other passenger would definitely have been more inconvenienced
with a move. In both cases I wrote a letter to the airline later. In
both cases I was advised by mail that to avoid this I should check
with the boarding gate agent before boarding when I have a boarding
pass issued elsewhere. Since then I have always checked with the
boarding gate agent, and since then duplicate assignments when they
have occured have always been resolved in my favor.

IMHO raising an unholy ruckus at the boarding gate or in the
aircraft is a clear case of punishing a whole lot of innocent people,
and should be avoided if it is at all possible to keep ones emotions
in check. The airline staff or passengers on the aircraft have very
little control over the stuff that constitutes the root cause of the
problem. Therefore it is much more productive to resolve the immediate
problem amicably with fellow passengers and crew members and then take
it up with the folks in customer service and complaints department,
who may actually be able to do something about it.

Let's face it guys (and gals), the real problem is with the abominably
designed distributed seat assignment software that all airlines seem
to use.

Jishnu Mukerji
[e-mail]