If you find that you and your travel party have been assigned seats away from each other on a plane, it can be tempting to ask other passengers if they would be willing to move so you can sit with your group.
Some people might be more than okay with moving seats, especially if they’re travelling alone, while some might be more cautious about giving up their seat if they’d booked it in advance.
While most airlines don’t have specific rules against switching seats with another passenger, it might get a bit confusing if you’ve ordered a meal, and some passengers will prefer to stay in their assigned seats.
Whether or not you’ve found yourself asking another passenger to switch seats with you or have changed seats as a kind gesture to a stranger, one flight attendant has now warned against this as it might lead to more trouble than you might initially realise.
Taking to TikTok, flight attendant Leanna shared her own anecdote of having been asked to switch seats with a woman in front of her and why it might not have been a good idea.
In a video where she can be seen straightening her hair, Leanna said she was on her way to Jordan, but during her flight to Frankfurt where she was getting a connecting flight from, she was asked by a woman in the row in front of her if she was willing to switch seats.
“Normally I am absolutely 100% against changing seats. I think your lack of planning should not constitute me having to move, unless that seat happens to be an upgrade, but it usually never is,” Leanna said. But she decided to make an exception and agreed to switch seats.
“But I’m already, like, on edge about it, cause even despite it’s just like the seat itself, you have to keep in mind if the person you switch with does anything to act up on the plane, that can now come back on you,” she said.
She continued to explain: “I know that sounds dramatic […] but like, I see what goes down on the plane, so like, if this lady now decides to go smoke in the bathroom or something, that could come back on me because my name is gonna be on the manifest right there.”
However, this wasn’t the biggest worry for Leanna, as she soon realised her credit card was connected to her original seat number.
“Then I realised, wait a second, I’m flying on United,” she said. “If you know anything about United’s service, if you wanna buy drinks or anything, you have to put your card onto the app ahead of time, which I’ve done before so my card is stored on the app.”
She went on to say she flagged down a flight attendant to ask wheter or not this meant that the woman in her assigned seat now would be able to use her credit card on the flight, to which the flight attendant said that it could be a possibility.
“She’s like, ‘Well, they’re supposed to verify even with the seat number, they don’t always though.’ But she was like, ‘I’m the one working in this section so I’ll make sure,’ so it was okay,” Leanna told her viewers.
Sharing her own experience of being a flight attendant and working on a plane, she said it’s easy to get the wrong information from passengers, as she claimed most people won’t actually listen to what she’s saying and therefore agree to things they didn’t know they were agreeing to, such as paying for drinks they thought were complimentary.
“So you know even if they’re verifying the name, they’re probably going, ‘Oh Ms Coy,’ and they’re like, ‘Yep,’ and like not actually listening to what the flight attendant is saying,” Leanna said.
“Now, do I think this lady I switched seats with was trying to scam me out of money on my card? No,” Leanna said. “But that’s just something to be aware of, and again, I fully support you if you don’t wanna switch seats. You are entitled to the seat that you chose.”