'Another person was assigned to my seat on a plane. She acted like I had stolen hers.'
"Another person was assigned to my seat on a plane. She acted like I had stolen hers."
LexB777
I (27M) was on a Delta flight, as I normally am to go back home to Alabama. I go through the motions and find my proper seat. I put my headphones on and start listening to a podcast when a woman around my age comes up and says, "You're in my seat."
I tell her that I'm in my assigned seat and show her my boarding pass in the app on my phone. I think she must have made a mistake, but she shows me her paper boarding pass. She was, in fact, also assigned to this seat! She starts getting real snippy with me, telling me I need to get out of her seat.
I explain that we both were assigned to this seat and we need to get it sorted out, but she keeps saying stuff like I had a "good try at stealing her aisle seat." Now I'm kinda angry, but I realize she must be stupid and can't understand the situation, so it's okay.
She calls over a flight attendant and says I'm refusing to get out of her seat (the conversation had barely even started, I never said I wouldn't move, just that we needed to get it sorted out). Flight attendant tells me to move to another seat, which was fine. I'll get it sorted after complying with the flight attendant's instructions.
She sits down and again has to say a jab at me about stealing her seat. Again, I was in my assigned seat, there was clearly a mistake, but she can't fathom that happening. After I sat back down in another seat, I show the flight attendant my boarding pass in the app.
Now I'm about 5 rows up from where I was, and she's chastising me across the rows and the aisle. Like ??? I get that she's stupid, but she doesn't have to be mean about it. I am now very mildly infuriated.
The flight attendant then realizes I was in my proper seat. Better yet, it was assigned to me first. He goes to whisper to some other flight attendants. He comes back to the woman and tells her she has to move!
I heard him try to explain it to her several times before she finally got up. She went from making some sort of comment every few seconds to not saying a word, and I was able to enjoy my Stuff You Should Know podcast in peace.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
reverse_mango
Did the airline double book the seat or was it a simple typo?
The OP responded here:
LexB777
Double booked as far as I know.
Duel_Option
What happened is you got the seat on the original booking, hers was assigned at the airport and the software didn’t catch you were in the seat. There’s some lag on Delta’s end and I’ve gone through this many times over the years.
My suggestion is to ALWAYS call/follow flight attendant instructions and just be polite, these folks don’t get paid till the damn doors are shut, they want to resolve the situation asap.
I’ve moved out of seats so people could sit together, given up my exit row seat for a tall person (I’m 6’3, if you’re bigger than me I feel bad for you, have my seat please). 99% of the time you’re going to get free drinks or snacks from a flight attendant, they are good people that just want to have a nice quiet flight.
Ignore the aholes when traveling in airports, there’s a lot of anxiety that goes with it and it tends to bring out the worst in people and then they might be drinking as well. That’s not an excuse for the behavior, but if you prepare yourself in advance and shrug it off you’ll laugh at the nonsense people do later.
Biomax315
Started mildly infuriating, ended completely satisfying.
latflickr
Found myself in the exact same situation. But instead of sitting down in to another random seat, I told the crew member about the double booking and that I would wait at the end of the plane until completion of boarding so i would seat in any leftover empty seats.
Which I did, but before I could chose one, the same crew member came to me informing me that “there plenty of seats available in business class if you like.”
Josherline
In my experience I’ve found you sometimes get smart people who are mean, and that’s furustrating. You also get stupid people who are not mean, which is kind of endearing. But when you get people that are both stupid AND mean…that’s a whole other level of human being 😂
BenedictineBaby
when i walked past her, I would have calmly told her that I didnt appreciate her trying to steal my seat and given her my most haughty look.
stillnotelf
I was once flying with a coworker Frank Rarename. We got on a plane. There's a guy in his seat. Frank asks him what's up. The guy rudely says "is your name Frank Rarename?", to which my friend says yes. There was much dropping of jaws.
Anyway the airline messed up, but they did have two seats assigned to Frank Rarename, they just printed the boarding pass twice for one of them and never for the other one. Both flew that day.
yesitsmenotyou
When I was a FA (not Delta) a double-booked seat usually meant that one of the passengers had gotten a last minute upgrade to first. Usually it was not a big deal and both people were chill until we sorted it out, but there was this one time…one of the passengers was like your annoying person x 10.
Causing such a ruckus that we nearly had to have “the talk” and potentially exit the plane. The whole crew took great pleasure in informing the nice one, definitely in front of the shitty one, that she would in fact be enjoying our first class service on the flight.