[The_Judge]

Jim......I am understanding of your words. Believe me.......I would like to see nothing more than the airlines regulated again and have to answer to someone. However, that will not happen because of money. The big boys (and I mean the execs, not the airline itself) are making way too much money to let that happen.

I'd like to examine the 3 suggestions you proposed. The first one about giving the same seat back to the customer when an aircraft change happens. Come on now, I am the opposite of a company man (whatever the word is for that)but do you really think they do not have a fallback for this? Yes there is, at least where I worked. When an aircraft change happened the seats the customers had reserved were transferred to the new aircraft if they were identical. If not, the customer was given the same type of seat where possible. For those that had a seat reserved that could not be accommodated in the same type of seat, they were given an alternate seat. When the seat map was full (by full I mean no seats available other than those blocked for priority and disabled passengers that will open up 24 hour before departure) the rest of the passengers went on what we called a reacom list. Now I don't know how the computer chose what passengers were given priority, so don't ask.
The passenger who began this thread obviously fell into the reacom list. That list is then worked by the agents when the passengers check-in. They will give them what is left. Is it a good system? Unless the airline uses the exact same plane in every case of an aircraft change then I would say yes, this is probably the only thing that seems to work.


The next item you listed was that the airline failed to tell him his seats were cancelled. The agent has NO WAY of knowing whether a passenger has a reserved seat or not unless he physically makes a specific entry outside the norm of check-in. Can't agree with you that the airline failed here.

The last item is very similar to the first. Passengers who do have a reserved seat are given priority over others in the case of an aircraft change. The computer will look for the same or similar types of seats and insert the passenger(s) in them.

As crappy as it is and I agree it's crappy (that's why I'm a former airline employee rather than current) the situation, in my opinion, will not get better in our lifetime. We'll have to deal with what's in place or choose not to fly. Again, JMHO.