It’s no surprise that certain luxuries or amenities come at a price, so you have to make up your mind about how bad you actually want them. And if you do decide to buy the better seats at the concert or pay for an upgrade in the hotel, you expect to get exactly what you paid for, right?
Well, this redditor did, too, when he paid for first-class plane tickets for him and his child. However, when they boarded the aircraft, they found other people had occupied their seats, saying that “they deserved them”. Scroll down to find the full story below.
Sometimes, even paying extra for a seat can’t ensure that you will get it
Image credits: Grey_Coast_Media/Envato elements (not the actual photo)
This passenger had to ask someone out of the first-class seats he paid for
Image credits: astakhovyaroslav/Envato elements (not the actual photo)
Image credits: alex_moreno794
Collecting fees for choosing certain seats is a relatively new practice
Image credits: Royal Wave ENT/Pexels (not the actual photo)
It’s no secret that situations like this happen in planes constantly; people who don’t want to pay for certain seats—whether to fly first-class, sit together with their travel buddies, or enjoy the view from a window seat—believe that they are entitled to them, nevertheless.
That might be because they are used to the old ways of traveling, as having to pay for a certain seat is a relatively new practice, USA Today reports. According to said source, such fees started to appear somewhere in the mid-late 2000s, and by the time we reached 2018, the three biggest players in the airline industry in the US were all charging fees for at least some of the seats.
According to the president at the airline consulting firm IdeaWorksCompany, Jay Sorensen, such fees are starting to rival what many carriers collect for travelers' baggage. “The rapid embrace of assigned seating fees by all airlines has been a surprise to me. The extent to which they have been such powerful generators of revenue has been a surprise to me as well,” he told USA Today.
Paying a fee to get a seat they desire is clearly not something every traveler is willing to do. But if they don’t feel like spending money on a certain seat, they shouldn’t try to steal it from someone who did, either, claiming they deserve it.
There are many things passengers do that annoy those around them
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An individual trying to snatch something that’s rightfully yours is annoying at best, anyone who’s been in a similar situation to OP can attest to that. But people stealing seats is far from the only behavior that tends to drive aircraft passengers crazy.
According to a YouGov survey, what annoys travelers the most is drunk people; more than half of respondents—55%, to be exact—say that it’s completely unacceptable, and 20% nod in agreement, saying that it’s “somewhat unacceptable” at least.
Travelers who can’t handle their alcohol are followed on the list by those who don’t use headphones—The Office is great, don’t get me wrong, but not when you’re trying to sleep and it’s your neighbor in the aisle seat choosing the episode. Travelers also reportedly hate when others take off their shoes mid-flight, start grooming in public—be it brushing their hair or clipping their nails—or fully recline their seats.
It’s arguably safe to assume that the OP would add “being rude to other passengers” to the list of annoying things people on planes do, as even though the entitled woman was eventually removed from the seat the redditor paid for, she didn’t leave without making a comment first. Well, fellow netizens had comments in regards to her behavior, too.
Fellow netizens shared their thoughts in the comments section
