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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

> This obviously limits what the airline makes, but keeps things generally fair.

What possible incentive would an airline have to do that, then?

> If someone does book the middle seat, we just trade aisle/window for the middle, so we're together, and he other person feels like he got an upgrade.

This infuriates me. My wife and I traveled cross country last month and due to a maintenance issue the previous night, our 6am flight was cancelled and we were pushed to 10am. What resulted was us trying to select seats when every row on the plane was either full or window-aisle. Had people flying together actually selected seats next to each other, it stands to reason some of those would have opened up and we may have been able to sit together.

Not a big deal for a 30-minute connecting flight, but not the best 5 hours to start a trip with.

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> it stands to reason some of those would have opened up and we may have been able to sit together.

I'm curious what your reasoning is? That experience sounds like it sucked, I've had similar and I can sympathize, but I might guess that your anger is misplaced. The comment you replied to is someone traveling in a pair. People traveling in pairs and shifting from a window/aisle to a middle only vacates 1 seat in a 3-seats-per-side 727 type plane, so that strategy doesn't affect you. If a plane is entirely full of pairs, no shifting for people to sit together will let you and your wife sit together. You could possibly sit across the aisle from each other if you find two pairs, which you can sometimes do with some talking to passengers and/or agents.

It's far more likely that the plane was mostly full of singles and not pairs, and asking someone to move to a middle for you is a downgrade for them. I've done it successfully before by asking a few people nearby who'd be willing to move in exchange for me buying them a drink on the flight. But, most people are quite understandably reluctant to move to a middle when they're in a window or aisle with an empty middle next to them.

Ultimately though, no amount of communication or behavior or game theory would be better than if the airlines would just make the seats more reasonably sized -- just a couple inches in each direction. But of course, if they do that, we pay more. :P

> What possible incentive would an airline have to do that, then?

For one, the airline makes more than if it had without bidding. Second, there is some value in not completely pissing off your customers. In my opinion, if the airline asks "how much are you willing to pay?" but you normally pay less, customers will hand over their money with a smile.

In this situation, wouldn't the person sitting in the middle be willing to trade for either the aisle or the window seat?

I think the point of the parent comment is that the strategy of capturing the two end seats of a three-person row displaces noncoupled passengers across more rows which has the potential to make finding coupled seats less likely for other fliers.

Yes I didn't do a great job explaining it but this is what I meant. You end up with a lot of couple + single filled rows and couple + empty seat rows. If you selected the seats you wanted instead of trying to game everyone else on what is probably a full or nearly-full flight anyway, there would be more rows filled with 3x single passengers.

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