FR - A Tale of the Unexpected

Mebuntu

Some of you may find this interesting…and even offer a possible explanation.

In February of this year, well in advance, I booked a one-way flight from BHX to DUB and, as usual, paid for a seat towards the rear of the aircraft. What happened at online check in and subsequently on the aircraft was most unusual.

I went to check in online a week before the flight, but, at the point where the check-in process acknowledges your original seat purchase and moves on, it failed to do so and informed me that, unless I now paid for a seat, check in would not possible for another few days. Needless to say, I wasn’t about to pay a second time.

Even though I had the printed evidence of the booked seat on the desk in front of me I decided to pretend I was making a new booking for that flight which would give me an opportunity to see if my previously booked seat was now “free” or already selected on the aircraft seat plan. When I got to it I discovered that my seat wasn’t even on the plan. In fact, there were only 26 rows. 27-33 had disappeared.

In hundreds of flights on FR I never had reason to contact them but now I had. I got through very quickly to Customer Service and explained the problem. To cut a long story short the end result was that the agent, who couldn’t explain the missing rows, suggested I select another seat (for free, of course) from those available on the plan which I did and he put it through the system. A half hour later I was able to check in with the new seat as per usual and print the Boarding Pass.

Out of curiosity I decided to monitor the flight daily over the week and, at various times, it was showing as SOLD OUT and later it would change to “1 seat remaining at this price” before reverting back to SOLD OUT.

Being usually in an aisle seat towards the back I tend to be one of the last to board and, when I entered the cabin, rows 27-33 were empty as were their overheads. There was then a period when nothing seemed to be happening but eventually a cabin crew member came down and began asking people would they move to seats at the back for “weight and balance”. I happily volunteered but some were reluctant and it took a while to set things up until rows 25-28 were now empty except for, I think, one person. The flight, which was already 90 minutes behind schedule due (per Captain) to earlier delays, was just under two hours late by the time we departed.

highlydebased

Sounds like they planned to schedule the sole 737-700 on the flight which has less rows than usual, though looks like it didn't show up after all.

Mebuntu

highlydebased wrote: »

Sounds like they planned to schedule the sole 737-700 on the flight which has less rows than usual, though looks like it didn't show up after all.

Sounds plausible but I would have thought that, as soon as its intended use on the flight rather than a 738 was decided, any pax who had already booked seats down the back would have been moved to seats further up and then informed by text or email. FR's system must not be set up for such a situation with there being only one -700 in the fleet that I'm sure I read somewhere had been configured for private hire with an executive seat plan rather than play an active part in day-to-day ops.

It will be interesting to see if it happens again during the busy Summer season.

highlydebased

Mebuntu wrote:

It will be interesting to see if it happens again during the busy Summer season.

It is the private jet indeed however it is back in Y config for peak summer months for DUB-UK routes