Who on earth invented pre-booked seats???

An epidemic has tainted the the travel industry over the past 15 years or so. This epidemic is beginning to grind me down. I seem to be spending a large chunk of time in my working day dealing with queries about pre-booked seats or where people are going to be sat on a plane.

I remember the good old days when people used to innocently arrive at the airport & hand over their paper tickets (remember those – a blast from the past eh)? We would be at the mercy of the check-in staff and we would secretly hope we’d get the ‘nice’ one who smiled a lot & wouldn’t worry too much about the weight of our suitcases. There was always a grumpy one who looked like they had got out of bed the wrong side and you definitely didn’t want to deal with THAT one.

But back in those days we didn’t even feel the need to ask if we were all sitting together. It was automatically assumed that we would be and actually we always were. Even Mr or Mrs Grumpy didn’t attempt to split us up, although I bet my parents secretly wished that they were sat nowhere near us at times. In my 38 years of flying the only time I have ever been sat apart from my travelling companions has been since the dawn of pre-booked seats.

I know people who have not booked holidays purely because they couldn’t choose a seat or that they had to pay to do so. It’s just crazy!

My sister recently booked a holiday for her family, paid for pre-booked seats, but when she went on to choose them there were none together, so what was the point in paying for them? Not only that, the airline’s system was trying to seat young children away from the parents which is completely wrong.

In the early days of airlines allowing you to choose seats many airlines allowed you to pick seats free of charge, but there are very few of those left. I have just flown with Emirates who I love flying with, but even they have started charging if you want to choose your seats. For our return flights it would have cost us £200 for 2 of us which I refused to pay. As it happened when we checked in on line we were allocated excellent seats together, so I will never pay this charge.

I really wish we could go back to the old days where nobody could choose a seat and everyone was treated fairly. It would certainly free up time for me on a daily basis and I suspect take some of the pre-flight stress away from the travelling public.

That’s my little rant over. Do you agree or do you like paying to choose your seats?

Let me know.