How to get the best seat on an airplane every time

[v_tec]

Originally Posted by Z3guy

you are either really rich, really stupid, or just don't know the value of a dollar....I fly business once in a bluemoon, but I am not paying for it personally.....first class is 8x more expensive than economy....I don't care how comfortable first class is, I would rather fly economy + buy a really nice set of wheels Vs flying 1st class.....

.....or you just don't know the definition of a trolll

[bcrdukes]

xilley was afterall banned for a reason. haha

[Hehe]

When I fly for work, I don't tend to think about this as my company pays for good seats (in exchange you get some brutally tight schedules... I once did a mini round-the-world trip to 7 cities in just under 5 days.)

But a few suggestion I can think of after flying so often are:
1) GET ON A PROGRAM!
Miles are worth roughly 2ct/mile... by not collecting miles, you are basically throwing money away. A round-trip to Asia is easily 10k+ in miles (more if you have status or fly in premium cabin), so by not collecting miles on a trans-pacific flight, you basically wasted $200+.
Which program to join really depends on your route and target. You could easily find info online.

2) Fly with enough time planning.
I usually can't make my planning when traveling for work, but when I have time to spare, I always ask the gate agent if they need any volunteers. This happens very often in popular routes during peak hours/dates.
I have scored over $2k in travel vouchers and been upgraded every time I give up my seat in 2013.
Basically what you do is, during check-in, ask the agent to see if the flight is full, if they say yes, make your way to the gate and you let the gate agents know that you are willing to volunteer if they need seats.
When they actually do need seat, they would usually come up with some lousy offers at first, but if you are persistent (remember, the worse case is that you get on the flight you suppose to fly in the seat you suppose to seat) and they are desperate enough, sometimes they have amazing offers.

In a flight from Taipei to HK, I got 4k TWD in cash+upgrade to fly the next flight (which was 1:30 later). It worked out great for me as I'd have had to wait at HKG for my flight of HKG-EWR anyhow.

Hope this helps other FF on here.

[Amaru]

Originally Posted by SkinnyPupp

Last time I moved to a seat in an empty row, the stewardess told me to move to my assigned seat until take off is complete

That's the advantage of boarding last... if you board the plane and walk directly to that seat, there's no way the flight attendants will know that it's not actually your assigned seat. If you sit down first in your assigned seat, then move to another row, it becomes obvious.



Occasionally on small planes, especially turbo-props, they might ask you to sit at the back of the plane anyway for weight distribution... only ever had that happen a few times, and the plane was almost completely empty each time.

[Amaru]

Originally Posted by tool001

op, by the looks of how much u know about flying,, i presume u fly alot? if so, u should already be gold status on both major alliance and automatically get upgraded???

I've averaged ~3-5 trips per year for the past five years or so. Each trip usually involves at least 4-6 flights due to connections or visiting different cities during the holiday.

So, I'm not really a hardcore frequent flyer, I just love traveling and spend most of my disposable income on it.

As mentioned, I fly the cheapest airline for a given flight (including charter / low-cost carriers that aren't part of major airline alliances) and have decided that FFPs wouldn't really be that beneficial.

If I could go back in time, I'd probably have signed up for a couple of FFPs before I started flying regularly, just to start collecting points... but at this point I'm at 0 -- and I've also become pretty good at finding flight deals without any FFP perks -- so I'm not very motivated to sign up now.

I'm sure that if you either fly business (on the same airlines) or if you regularly fly to the same destinations (again, on the same airlines), then a FFP probably makes a ton of sense.

[v_tec]

Originally Posted by Amaru

That's the advantage of boarding last... if you board the plane and walk directly to that seat, there's no way the flight attendants will know that it's not actually your assigned seat.

Ever heard of a flight manifest?

[Amaru]

Originally Posted by v_tec

Ever heard of a flight manifest?

Why on earth would the flight attendants check to see whether or not the last passenger boarding an aircraft is sitting in their assigned seat?

I'm sure it's possible that someone could find out if it's not officially your seat, but in practice, they never do.

[SkinnyPupp]

Originally Posted by Amaru

Why on earth would the flight attendants check to see whether or not the last passenger boarding an aircraft is sitting in their assigned seat?

I'm sure it's possible that someone could find out if it's not officially your seat, but in practice, they never do.

Like I said earlier, they did it to me on a half empty flight. This was going from Japan to Korea

[Amaru]

Originally Posted by SkinnyPupp

Like I said earlier, they did it to me on a half empty flight. This was going from Japan to Korea

Were you the last person to board the plane, and did you sit down in your assigned seat before moving to a different one?

I'm advocating boarding last, ignoring your assigned seat, and taking the best one available confidently as though it were the one assigned to you.