[Travelandtourism] That's Ridiculous! Pay a Seat Reservation Fee -- or Your Kids Don't Fly With You

[Reese]

Being separated from your family while you're traveling is every child's 
worst nightmare. Every parent's, too.

But Daniel Fitzsimmons recently experienced a different kind of separation 
anxiety, thanks to US Airways (www.usairways.com).

Fitzsimmons is an attorney from Watkins Glen, NY, and he recently bought 
five round-trip tickets between Syracuse, NY, and San Juan. Just a thing or 
two you need to know about Fitzsimmons: He's an experienced air traveler who 
has booked many flights online. And he specializes in real estate and 
personal injury law, so not much phases him.

But what he witnessed when he tried to book the US Airways tickets made him 
do a double-take.

"After buying the seats, I went back later to select seats on the two 
connecting flights to make sure I would be seated near my children," he told 
me. "On the last leg, I entered my seat, then my wife's, then saw that the 
only remaining seats were premium seats."

Those "premium" seats -- garden-variety economy-class seats that cost extra 
to reserve, because they're considered more desirable -- would cost another 
$30 a piece. That's an extra $90 to sit next to his kids.

And that's not all.

Fitzsimmons reviewed the booking screens carefully. (Remember, he's an 
attorney.) And he came to a troubling conclusion: "I thought that unless I 
bought the premium seats, my children would end up on a different flight."

Why? The online seat selection chart shows a diagram of the aircraft. Each 
of the seats are numbered.

After selecting seats for himself and his wife, he noticed all of the seats 
except the premium ones were labeled as reserved and unavailable.

"So looking at the diagram, I concluded that those remaining seats would be 
taken by fliers willing to pay for the remaining seats and thus, having not 
been assigned a seat, the children would be put on a different flight," he 
says.

I asked US Airways if his interpretation was correct. It didn't respond to 
my inquiry, but it did reply to Fitzsimmons'.

By the way, before I get to the airline's answer, I should say that I've 
never heard of parents and children being split up in the manner Fitzsimmons 
describes it. If it happened, I imagine the airline would have hell to pay 
for it.

US Airways' Choice Seat program, it explained in an e-mail, "gives customers 
more say in where they sit on the aircraft, by charging a small fee for 
these highly desirable seats."

"We pre-assign approximately 75% of the seats on each of our flights," it 
continued, "The other 25# are reserved for Preferred members and purchased 
choice seats. Once the pre-assigned seats are filled, any other seating 
arrangements may be made at the airport on day of departure."

Of course, that's a form letter that never addressed Fitzsimmons' perception 
that his kids would fly on a different plane.

This isn't really about being separated from your kids.

Fitzsimmons, whose kids are 13, 17 and 19, could easily fly solo. At those 
ages, I would probably pay the airline extra to not be on the same flight 
with my children -- but I digress.

No, this is about misleading customers into thinking that if they don't pay 
for the premium seats, they'll be separated from a loved one traveling with 
them. And in my book, that's a form of emotional blackmail.

It's bad enough that you have to pay extra for seats in the back of the 
plane, where there are no comfortable seats, only various levels of 
uncomfortable. And it's bad enough that companies like US Airways are 
parsing tickets and seat assignments. But to be threatened with separation 
if you don't cough up the cash for a premium seat seems terribly wrong.

It works, though. Fitzsimmons couldn't say "no" to the offer.

Reese