This time its NY’s Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer urging legistlation to allow families to sit together without incurring additional fees for premium seats sometimes charged by airlines. He’s reacting to press last week about how families are being “targeted” and are being forced to pay additional fees when trying to sit together.
Airlines in some cases charge premiums for window or aisle seats, and when a family of 3-4 or more travel, they are almost always forced to have 1 or 2 members in this type of “premium” seat, thus creating this added fiscal stress.
The Senator is expected to send a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood urging him to implement rules that would prevent such an affront to the traveling family. Well guess what, should that rule be enacted, fares will go up beyond what the fee would have been (at least thats how airlines have historically reacted). Perhaps airlines will get creative and even charge a higher fare if you are booking more than 2 seats at a time.
I can’t agree with the Senator on this one (or much else that he has proposed in the past) simply because in my opinion, he’s trying to turn this into an entitlement issue that then actually reverse discrimates against those who don’t have children but would still have to pay a premium for sitting in a premium seat on an aircraft.
A family traveling together with a bit of planning can easily accomplish sitting together. Whether its sitting in pairs or using the middle seats on a wide body, it’s easy to accomplish.
Now I expect a fair share of you will disagree with me on this point, but being one without children I am not a big fan of fees being waived for the family who decides to pile into an airplane for their once a year trip to Disneyland while others like myself who fly frequently, and provide far more revenue to the airlines, are forced to pay more for the same seat.
But I am curious, what do you think? Should families be entitled to fee waivers when traveling together, or should they be treated like any other passenger? The polls are open:
[poll id=”82″]
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what winds up happening is the passengers with children not sitting together or dont want to pay, usually get on board and cause a delay because they attack the flight attendants and insist the crew move people from seats, thus causing chaos and usually a delay. the crew takes the brunt of it because the passengers become unruly, so, just let them have the darn seats together, or do you want a delayed flight and possibly misconnect. you can thank the lcw cost open seating carriers for the whole mess! thanks wn!
Honestly, if you some elites wants to wrangle my little monster while I enjoy a trans-pacific flight in peace, by all means oppose this. No skin off my back. Watch out for the projectile vomit; she’s never done well on planes or boats.
Implementing fees for sittings together would reduce the air fare cost for all passengers then i would buy this new policy but if airline is just profiting by taking this approach then i would say government should interfere and stop this non-sence.
My family may only be 3 people but I’ve never had a problem sitting us together when we wanted to be together. When our daughter was younger as long as one of us was with her that’s fine. And now that she’s 15 it’s certainly not critical to sit next to mom and dad – quite the opposite! Even for the wife and me, we’ve been married 16.5 years so there is no great need to be sitting like lovebirds for a few hours on a plane. It’s nice to be without arguing for a bit! 😉
Jayson says: Ugg…the entitled again.
You birthed the kids. You pay for them
+1
Ugg…the entitled again.
You birthed the kids. You pay for them.
Certain airlines are pushing the ancillary revenue over the limits. This is one of them. Charging extra for legspace, okay, charging for exitseats, okay, but when will they discount the middleseats?
Suck it up cupcakes. You chose to have kids and everything else that goes along with them including higher costs…
I am not too worried about what over-entitled elites flying on their company’s dime (and subsidized by the consumers) think about this legislation. Whoopee do, you might not get a window seat.
1st world problem for sure.
@MGD Actually United is already doing dynamic pricing for window or aisle seats.
Politicans messes up everything in the world.
that’s only thanks to certain airlines that implement aisle/window pricing and end up ruining for the rest of us.
UA is straight forward – economy plus up front and exit row is extra pricing, everything in the back free. but i also heard SHARES might start doing exactly what i fear it would do
@colleen. Hah – I clicked on this in order to post precisely that quote but you beat me to it. If it walks like a duck…
Let the market work! This results in lower fares for everyone! If you truly need to see it bundled, then go fly Jetblue. Also, what about Southwest? Are they now going to have to reserve seats for families?
This is silly!
@colleen: LOL! 🙂
overheard … “The most dangerous place to be is between Chuck Schumer and a microphone”