“B efore take off, I wanted to ask him to switch seats with me. Since my seat was inferior because there was someone else in the row, it only seemed fair to offer him money to switch. I figured I’d be willing to pay $100 for the switch, and settled on offering him $20 to switch, hoping that by anchoring low we’d end up there or around $40. But I chickened out because it’s awkward to interact commercially or negotiate with strangers in a non-commercial setting.”
Would You Accept Money to Change Your Seat?
The paragraph you just read is from this article written by Scott Grimmer of MileValue, who asks the question of whether or not offering a fellow passenger aboard an airplane money for his or her seat is acceptable; and during a flight from Buenos Aires to Houston to Honolulu seated in the economy class cabin, Grimmer decided to tender his offer in order to secure a row of seats on which to lie down — also know colloquially as the “economy class lie-flat” seat. The potential recipient declined; and Grimmer speculated possible reasons as to why in the article.
Interestingly, I performed a cursory search on FlyerTalk to find out if this topic has been approached; and the best I could find is this discussion from December of 2006 asking what is the most money you have ever been offered not to recline your seat. That discussion was closed to new content the next day.
That sort of cash offer might convince more people to accept a cash offer instead of getting involved in a childish altercation that could get them booted off of an airplane — or worse: arrested by law enforcement officers.
Summary
In all of the years I have traveled via airplane, I have neither offered nor accepted money to change seats. I have both asked and have been asked to change seats. Sometimes an exchange was completed. Sometimes it was denied…
…and although I do not know of any situation where I would ever offer to pay money to a fellow passenger to change seats, I probably would not feel right about accepting money from someone else. I suppose whether or not the other person successfully convinces me to accept money for the seat to which I was originally assigned depends on the situation.
At the risk of irritating George from TravelBloggerBuzz, I am going to do the typical “blogger” thing and ask you a question to conclude this article: would you accept money to change your seat — and if so, what is the limit as to how much you would be willing to pay?
Photograph ©2015 by Brian Cohen.
