[stevicus]

Originally Posted by HoustonFlyer

Stevicus, you need to remember that the agent did not actually call the police. It may well have been that someone realized that the situation was under control and there was no need to call in the police. At least give them credit for that and not go on and on about how wrong it is to have called the police. For a passenger to grab something out of an agent's hand is most inappropriate to say the least even if it is too trivial for the police to deal with.

Sure, I'm glad that they didn't call the police, but the fact that they brought it up and threatened somebody with it is just so wrong on multiple levels.

As a business, the airlines are saying, in effect, "We cause problems that we can't handle ourselves, so the only thing we can do is call the police."

And that's where most of these problems seem to stem from. Passengers get conflicting information from airline employees, and so they balk about it. Instead of getting someone in upper management involved to deal with the problem, all they can think to do is call the police. That's because no one within the airline seems to know what's going on.

The fact that the agent "asked" him to give up those seats does not mean that he is entitled as of right to exit row seats. In fact if when the flight attendant comes around and looks at who is in those seats, she can make a final decision that they can't be allowed to occupy it. If a person is unable to understand English, he can be asked to leave that seat. If he appears unable to open the door, he can be asked to leave. If he appears uncooperative, he can be asked to leave the seat.

Yeah, I know the drill. I've sat in exit row seats before, but in this case, it was the gate attendant making the call without any justification. From the way it looks, "Potts" may have had some personal reason for doing it, which is probably why she didn't contact her own management and instead threatened the passenger with calling the police. She was probably doing something against company policy and knew it. (That's usually the case whenever someone refuses to call their manager and/or refuses to give their full name or ID # to a complaining customer.)

As the OP said, "Potts" declared him to be "disabled," but he insists that he wasn't disabled. The OP's writing reveals that he speaks English well enough, so there doesn't appear to be any valid reason for the gate attendant to override the normal channels which assured the OP that he had exit row seats in the first place.

If they're going to do something like this, then why bother having assigned seating at all?

Airline employees are trained to "ask" even if eventually they can pull rank and demand. If a passenger is in the wrong seat, the FA must "ask" him to give up the seat and show him to his correct assigned seat, and say "Thank you very much" when the passenger complies, even if the FA could have demanded it. So nothing turns on your point that the OP was asked to give up the seat.

Yes, I would agree with this in a technical sense. Whenever you're on someone else's property, the owner or their duly-appointed representative(s) can make you sit wherever they tell you to sit (or tell you to leave the property, if necessary). But it would seem to me that if I have a document from the owner that says that I'm entitled to a seat on that airline (and they already have MY MONEY IN THEIR POCKET), then the lower-level employees shouldn't have the right to override what is already on paper. If I have a piece of paper that says I have this particular seat, then that should carry more weight than whatever these entry-level flunkies have to say.