On the Spot: Airline seating

Question: Why won’t some airlines allow me to select my seat in advance?

Answer: Money and power.

That’s the answer to lots of questions, including this one, which I’ve received several times of late in various forms.

If you’re traveling steerage on some airlines, you often can’t select your seat more than 24 hours in advance without paying to do so. That gives the airline an opportunity to prey upon your worst-case-scenario fears. (Mine is being stuck in a nonreclining middle seat near the restroom on an 11-hour flight from Honolulu to Sydney. I would rather have a root canal — without Novocain — than ever do that again.)

If you want to ensure that you’re not going to be a captive audience, so to speak, you’ll fork over additional cash to get the seat you want. This is, said Jami Counter, a senior director of SeatGuru, “one more revenue stream,” adding, “Customers will pay for what they deem ‘value,’” said Counter, whose company helps you select the best seat by providing “maps” to hundreds of aircraft. (By way of example, if you’re on an American Airlines 737-800 to Austin, Texas, you might want to reconsider all the seats in rows 26, 27 and 28; SeatGuru says they have “some drawbacks.”)

Some smaller carriers hold seats for their best customers, a perk in this day of increasingly perkless travel. This sometimes means the “elite” customer who has a zillion frequent-flier miles. If it’s a really small carrier, the “elite” customer sometimes means friends, family or airline execs, which isn’t a bad idea for interpersonal relationships or job security but not so good for the customer. But that’s not what this is about.

The one almost unfathomable instance is British Airways, which instituted its policy of no-steerage-seat-before-the-24-hour-mark in the previous decade. A rep told me, “Gold and Silver Executive Club members, first-class customers and those holding fully flexible tickets will be able to book their seat at the time of purchase.” That means regular old passengers (that’s us) can pay or take our chances. Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me: Business-class passengers don’t get to select their seats more than 24 hours ahead of time unless they pay extra for them. When you price these tickets, the lack of logic becomes clear: If you are flying BA on Feb. 2 and returning Feb. 9, you would pay $830 for an economy seat or $5,128 for a business class seat. You pay five times more and you’re treated just like the rest of hoi polloi.

It’s tempting to spring for a seat (and we’re not talking about a premium seat with extra legroom — we’re talking about any seat) because not having one puts you in peril. “Keeping some people unassigned gives the carrier an easier target to bump if they need to,” said George Hoffer, an economics professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Whatever your concern — being stuck in a middle seat or without a seat — one thing is clear: Your fear is good for some airlines’ financial health. Or said another way, “Thank you for being neurotic. Have a nice flight.”

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