Originally posted by michaelab
I would still pay a bit extra for a "proper" airline with reserved seats
Ah, but how many airlines actually give you an "exclusively" reserved seat rather than allow a certain (low) percentage of their seating to be double bookable? Am I talking double Dutch, or does anybody else have an inkling of what I'm about to talk about here?
Well, back in December 2002 I was booked on a Virgin Atlantic flight to New York (from Heathrow), yep and even had a pre-booked reserved seat number printed on my ticket stub before arriving at the airport. I arrived at check-in, a good 2 and three-quarter hours prior to flight time, not to mention spending at least 2 hours in the check-in queue... by the time myself and about a dozen other passengers who were left had reached the end of the queue, we were all told that the flight had been overbooked and that there were absolutely no seats left!

Yes, we were told apparently that this is common practice within the industry, to allow a certain amount of a flight's seats to be overbookable, as often not 100% of the passengers turn up in most cases either due to late arrival or more commonly cancelling or not turning up at the last moment for whatever reason without prior arrangement. Well, it just so happened in this cases that they had gotten it very very wrong, and that every single ticket holder had indeed turned up.
Those of us who were left (the flight was already being held and was late for departure due to the extra long check-in queue), were told that we could either get a refund, or take the next available flight plus compensation. So I gladly took the offer of the next flight (in 2 hours time) plus the "compensation". Said compensation was a free open return ticket valid to any of Virgin's flight destinations. :MILD: