Being separated from your family while you're traveling is every child's worst nightmare. Every parent's, too.
But Daniel Fitzsimmons recently experienced a different kind of separation anxiety, thanks to US Airways (www.usairways.com).
Fitzsimmons is an attorney from Watkins Glen, NY, and he recently bought five round-trip tickets between Syracuse, NY, and San Juan. Just a thing or two you need to know about Fitzsimmons: He's an experienced air traveler who has booked many flights online. And he specializes in real estate and personal injury law, so not much phases him.
But what he witnessed when he tried to book the US Airways tickets made him do a double-take.
"After buying the seats, I went back later to select seats on the two connecting flights to make sure I would be seated near my children," he told me. "On the last leg, I entered my seat, then my wife's, then saw that the only remaining seats were premium seats."
Those "premium" seats -- garden-variety economy-class seats that cost extra to reserve, because they're considered more desirable -- would cost another $30 a piece. That's an extra $90 to sit next to his kids.
And that's not all.
Fitzsimmons reviewed the booking screens carefully. (Remember, he's an attorney.) And he came to a troubling conclusion: "I thought that unless I bought the premium seats, my children would end up on a different flight."
Why? The online seat selection chart shows a diagram of the aircraft. Each of the seats are numbered.
After selecting seats for himself and his wife, he noticed all of the seats except the premium ones were labeled as reserved and unavailable.
"So looking at the diagram, I concluded that those remaining seats would be taken by fliers willing to pay for the remaining seats and thus, having not been assigned a seat, the children would be put on a different flight," he says.
I asked US Airways if his interpretation was correct. It didn't respond to my inquiry, but it did reply to Fitzsimmons'.
By the way, before I get to the airline's answer, I should say that I've never heard of parents and children being split up in the manner Fitzsimmons describes it. If it happened, I imagine the airline would have hell to pay for it.
US Airways' Choice Seat program, it explained in an e-mail, "gives customers more say in where they sit on the aircraft, by charging a small fee for these highly desirable seats."
"We pre-assign approximately 75% of the seats on each of our flights," it continued, "The other 25# are reserved for Preferred members and purchased choice seats. Once the pre-assigned seats are filled, any other seating arrangements may be made at the airport on day of departure."
Of course, that's a form letter that never addressed Fitzsimmons' perception that his kids would fly on a different plane.
This isn't really about being separated from your kids.
Fitzsimmons, whose kids are 13, 17 and 19, could easily fly solo. At those ages, I would probably pay the airline extra to not be on the same flight with my children -- but I digress.
No, this is about misleading customers into thinking that if they don't pay for the premium seats, they'll be separated from a loved one traveling with them. And in my book, that's a form of emotional blackmail.
It's bad enough that you have to pay extra for seats in the back of the plane, where there are no comfortable seats, only various levels of uncomfortable. And it's bad enough that companies like US Airways are parsing tickets and seat assignments. But to be threatened with separation if you don't cough up the cash for a premium seat seems terribly wrong.
It works, though. Fitzsimmons couldn't say "no" to the offer.
"Given that there were just a few seats remaining, I purchased the premium seats," he told me, adding, "What would you have thought, when faced with that seat selection situation?"
Christopher Elliott is the author of the book "Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals" (Wiley). He's also the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the co-founder of the Consumer Travel Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for travelers. You can read more tips on his blog, elliott.org or e-mail him at chris@elliott.org. Christopher Elliott receives a great deal of reader mail, and though he answers them as quickly as possible, your story may not be published for several months because of a backlog of cases.
