GBLKD From United Kingdom, joined Jan 2011, 345 posts, RR: 0 Posted (1 year 3 months 2 weeks 2 hours ago) and read 1400 times:
I've flown FR and U2 before and have experienced the bunfight that ensues for seats on full flights and know that most low cost carriers don't allow you to select a specific seat before boarding. I know that the airlines say it increases thier costs to impliment such a system.
However, I've just been looking at booking myself a day out from BHX to EDI sometime next month with BE just for a ride on an E195 and a couple of hours in Edinburgh for lunch and a pint.
BE have a great way of doing it, before you pay the seating plan comes up with the seat that the computer has selected for you checked in red. If you want to change the selected seat you pay £6.50 which I think is quite reasonable. I'm yet to try and imput a trip for myself and my family but I guess that the computer would seat us as close together as possible.
Just wondering why more LCCs don't adopt a similar way of doing it, I'm surprised Mr O' Leary hasn't jumped on this clever little revenue stream. I'm by no means a computer expert but I doubt it would take a clever I.T. person long to have working.
Anyone else reckon it might work and benefit the customer?
migair54 From Spain, joined Jun 2007, 1273 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (1 year 3 months 2 weeks 1 hour ago) and read 1322 times:
Quoting GBLKD (Thread starter): BE have a great way of doing it, before you pay the seating plan comes up with the seat that the computer has selected for you checked in red. If you want to change the selected seat you pay £6.50 which I think is quite reasonable.
Reasonable????
they don´t assign seats because free seating help to do a faster boarding and specially checking, and that why if you want to select your own seat you can get the speedy boarding... basically be among the first ones to board the plane.
Quoting GBLKD (Thread starter): Just wondering why more LCCs don't adopt a similar way of doing it, I'm surprised Mr O' Leary hasn't jumped on this clever little revenue stream. I'm by no means a computer expert but I doubt it would take a clever I.T. person long to have working.
Speedy boarding is more or less the same.
Quoting GBLKD (Thread starter): Anyone else reckon it might work and benefit the customer?
I think they don´t care a lot about benefiting the customers....
RamblinMan From United States of America, joined Oct 2010, 1080 posts, RR: 1 Reply 2, posted (1 year 3 months 1 week 6 days 14 hours ago) and read 1103 times:
Personally I would rather have open seating than a charge to select a seat. Charging extra for bulkheads, exit rows, etc is fine as those seats have some added value...but other than that I want to either select it at booking for no fee, or not have an assignment at all.
Open seating is faster unless the flight is absolutely full. LCCs usually have shorter turns as a consequence... that is largely why they do it. They're not going to switch to the BE-style system for a few extra bucks if it would mean sacrificing utilization, and besides they can still get a few extra bucks by selling "speedy boarding" or whatever they want to call it.
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