Dont most travel adgents let you pick if you want a window or an aisle seat anyways?

I unconsciously blurt out "NO" every time I hear the word "upgrade" "service contract" "extended warranty"

So 2/3 of the existing seats are now deemed "preferred" and "an important revenue stream" for Northwest? What were they last year?

Can't you just, you know, ASK for an exit or aisle seat when booking?

Another gouge for the uninformed consumer, IMHO...

Row 28? Unless that was an exit row (unlikely), he got screwed. The normal coach choice seats are usually not too bad of a price, generally exit rows, so they have extra leg room, you get to board earlier than others since you're in an exit row.

A little tip - check out the layout of the plain before you go. You can see which type of plane you have if you check your reservation online. SeatGuru helps you to choose which seats you want, and the seats are reviewed by those who have used them.

[www.seatguru.com]

Does anyone who travels frequently know if the non US airlines are any better on service or are they flying Greyhound busses to?

chargeback the $60 and see how far you get doing that.

@Bladefist: Add, "Anything a Best Buy employee is about to say." to that list and you pretty much got it covered.

best part is that the seats we more than likely on a 40 year old dc-9 anyway

Coach Choice is plainly labeled as just being based on location, not additional legroom. I've flown Northwest a half dozen times so far this year and its clearly stated when it's offered at check in on the website. If you don't read the description, and it doesn't meet your expectations, you have only yourself to blame.

Ridiculous. Mind you, I only travel for pleasure and always book ahead of time, allowing me to pick aisle forward seats for no extra feel. If I were traveling at the last minute for work (or an emergency) and the trip were long enough, it might be worth something to me to pay for an aisle seat, IF I knew exactly what I was paying for. Sounds like Chris didn't. Sure, he should have asked more questions, but I can see how he'd presume it would be similar to what he received on other airlines. At least they gave him something, even if that only came down to miles. The way the automatic minimums for miles are drying up, 5,000 miles is actually a decent award.

i love flying Southwest, they allow you to choose your own seat, they have flexible cancellations/rescheduling, a pretty good rewards program and on top of that they are CHEAP.

Sorry, you're a fool for having purchased this in the first place. While it is a dumb fee, there's no way you can make a mistake about what you are getting.

wait until you randomly draw an exit or aisle seat - and sell it on ebay or someone else waiting in line for 20 dollars each. you just switch seats when you get on the plane

Perhaps that was the fee for a urine-free seat.

He did get 5000 miles out of it though... that's not too shabby.

I usually fly Northwest and they have the coach choice seats labelled on the map of the seats where you can select your seats online.

They are usually in the first 2 rows of the plane, they are slightly better because you get off the plane faster. Some of them don't have any seats in front of them so you do get more leg room.

I've never seen a seat in row 28 be a coach choice seat though.

Of course business travelers probably enjoy this because it isn't their money.

@BuddyGuyMontag: I'm not in the know about these "miles". What does this equate to? About $3.82?

Northwest is horrible, rude staff and every time we have flown with them our plane gets delayed, breaks or something goes wrong. Hell they made us stay at BWI for 3 days because they wouldn't fly our dogs because it was 1 degree over (81) They also lost one of our bags and gave us vouchers for some crappy hotel. I would advice the OP to contact somebody on the high ups to get your money back.

This company always makes me chuckle. The name reminds me of the rap group.

I'm flying NWA next week and the seat assignments I have are crap. I had to pick a middle seat because the only other ones available are seats you have to pay for. Ridiculous. I'm hoping that on the day of the flight that I will be able to get a different seat assignment because this is stupid. Luckily the aisle seat next to me isn't filled because it's a "choice seat" and no fool has bought it yet. God willing no one does if I'm stuck with the middle!

@blong81: 20% of a free domestic roundtrip. Not too bad, if you ask me.

It sounds to me like Northwest misrepresented the product. I think this would be worth dropping a note to the Attorney General's Office.

@uncle_fluffy: Thanks. Yea, that's not too bad. They could have just completely blew him off, but I would suspect that they want his money in the future so they gave him a little something.

"For the record, customer response for Coach Choice seats at Northwest has been strong and has exceeded our expectations."
Marketing Speak for "We never realized that there were so many stupid people out there"...

Bottom Line they are just sucking extra money out of you and offering what they should give you for free. A seat assignment. What a bunch of crap. Forget the 10 most anoying airline fees. Every fee ties for number one on that list. What happened to I buy a ticket on your airline you fly me to where I need to go. That's it. And hey, charge me whatever you think that the service is worth. I'll then make the decision to buy the ticket or not.

@petrarch1608: Everything else had better be good, considering how they'll think nothing of putting you on a plane with a cracked fuselage.

@ianmac47:

I fly weekly for business and my company (and the client they bill my travel expenses to) won't pay for this kind of a la carte stuff.

I ended up flying NWA for the first time in a while a few weeks ago and got stuck with the choice between paying out of my own pocket, or enduring a middle seat for a 6 hour journey. Ugh.

Last month, I flew from O'hare to Logan on United. I requested an exit row seat at the gate, since I'm 6'5", and have long legs, even for a man of my height. I was told that I had to purchase an Economy Plus upgrade. Since my fiancee and I were traveling together, I paid for two upgrades.

What the gate agent failed to tell me, is that there were only TWELVE people on the flight. After we boarded, the flight attendant actually walked through the plane and ASKED other passengers to fill in the exit rows.
The attendant allowed me to de-board to request a refund.

I requested a refund at the gate and was denied. the agent said "Our policy states that we have to charge extra for premium seats". I asked if they thought that making me pay for the upgrade, when there were only 12 people on the flight was good customer service, and the woman at the gate actually had the gall to tell me that it was, in fact, good customer service.

@Jesse: Except NWA, the rap group, would probably be far easier to deal with than NWA, the airline.

@A.W.E.S.O.M.-O: Southwest is still one of the safest airlines in the country. They haven't had any fatal crashes except that time a piece of landing gear fell and killed that kid in chicago.

One more reason to take the train I guess. Amtrak's coach seating is like an airline's first class, and don't get me started on the rooms for long trips.

I only wish there was more Amtrak coverage throughout the country, but instead the feds seem hellbent on bailing out "shitty airrines" If the DoT took all the money they were shoveling on Delta, AA, and the other legacy carriers and put it into Amtrak people wouldn't worry about flying anywhere.

@MrEvil: Au contraire! The fed has been continuously bailing out Amtrak by subsidizing at a loss since probably close to its inception.

by "added comfort", they mean sitting on a thinner wallet in your back pocket, though that wouldn't work for me since I'm a front-pocket guy.

I have to admit I was impressed with United's Economy Plus the one time I tried it. I bought the upgrade when I checked in and was able to get front row bulkhead seats that had a lot more legroom than I'm used to. And since there were cutouts at the bottom of the bulkhead to stow a bag, I could still have my laptop down by me, so I didn't have to be paranoid about it getting jostled too much overhead.

It was probably helped though by the fact that I was flying one of their smaller routes, ORD to DFW. I normally flew AA but for some reason that particular trip, AA's price skyrocketed.

RoachChoice has been around for at least a year and a half. Want extra legroom without paying the fee? Put yourself in one of the (E) seats at the ticket counter or using online check-in. I seriously doubt the popularity of the seats as the RoachChoice seats on most of the 30+ flights I flew with them last year were filled by elites who get them for free or non-revenue passengers who wait for seat assignments until the last minute.

I'd actually consider them one of the better airlines. My flight got canceled from La Guardia while I was en route in a taxi, they met me at the front of the line, gave me vouchers for free food, an upgrade, and a $50 voucher. Flew out 2 hours later, got delayed by blizzard at connection, got another voucher. 15 hours for LGA->PHX but their service made up for it. I Haven't had any other delays on the other half dozen flights I've had on NWA this year, even when flying to London. Everyone's going to have a mixture of good and bad experiences for airline, but they're only going to tell everyone about their bad ones (and exaggerate)

I might get trashed for first one to blame the op, but lets be fair!

First few things, I never flew on North West and hardly fly domestic (my domestic to international fly ratio is 1:20)

Aisle seats are absolutely different than middle/inner seats and there is significant group of people who prefer aisle seats - for the convenience.

If airline wanted to charge extra for those seats, its nothing wrong. (I hate all domestic airlines anyways)

Looks like you made uninformed decision or your expectation were different (more leg room?), but reading the response from airline they have made it clear - preferred seats not necessarily mean extra leg room - there are other attributes to it.

@petrarch1608: Um, that piece of landing gear didn't "fall" on the kid, it was connected to a plane that slid off the runway and into traffic on a nearby highway and crushed him.

[en.wikipedia.org]

I wonder if NWA realizes that they lost more money than the $60 in that extended exchange between Chris and the CSR (that is, unless the CSR is working for nothing.)

@kcrusher:

Nope. They reserve the better seats for people who either pay or are their elite flyers. You might get lucky and get one if they plane fills up, or you might be in a middle and get to move over if noone takes the choice aisle seat, but those are gambles.

@bohemian: I have flown on Jet Airways in India. The seats were average but in coach, - everyone got juice or water prior to the departure, then a full breakfast that was very nice, then they passed around a basket of CANDY. I was beside myself.

@ReverendDrGladhands:

You got what you were promised. The fact that United chose to give that product away to other people isn't really your concern.

Let me ask you something, out of curiosity; you're clearly angry at United over this. All else being equal, how much cheaper would United have to be the next time you fly to make you willing to fly them?

@muffinpan:

How is this a problem?

Option 1: Ticket is $300, choose any seat
Option 2: Ticket is $285, with a $30 fee for a good coach seat.

Wow that rep comes off as a total condescending dick. No amount of citing explanatory data will cure the fact that they ripped you off. Oh well, enjoy the publicity NWA.

Judging by this story as well as every other BS airline fee we've heard about recently it's going to take the airlines a couple of years to figure out how to run a viable business without pissing off their customers while doing it.

Mark my words, in the near future one of the big airlines will score a huge marketing coup with their No Extra Fees! ad campaign.

Northwest sucks.

We just flew NWA for a trip to visit my DH's family in England. Not only were the seats uncomfortable and the food awful, but on the way home, I was waiting in line for the bathroom and heard one of the stewardesses bitching at length about a man who had somehow gotten signed up for a dairy-free meal, which he didn't need or want. (He ate it anyway, though.) She then proceeded to complain about how the SAME family wanted a meal for a "lap child."

Guess who the family was? Yup ... mine. The man was my father-in-law, and the child was my son. (For the record, when we bought the tickets, we were asked if we wanted a child's meal for him -- we weren't asking for one at the last second or anything.)

The worst part is that when she saw me standing behind her, she didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed.

i have to confess that I do buy coach choice exit rows sometimes because I am tall and not a frequent flier. worth the money for me. prior to the implementation of that, scoring exit row was almost an impossibility.