Originally Posted by
GrahamO
Wow, the self-entitlement is strong with this one.
You're entitled to what you pay for and nothing more.
What utter tosh. What we are seeing here is once again self-important aircrew showing their firm belief that airlines exist solely to keep their hours current and fund their lifestyles (not all of them - just the utter cads who give the rest a bad name).
Back in 2010 we (my family and I) flew British Midland(?) to Cairo. I have two daughters who at the time would have bee 12 and 13. When we booked we specified that the girls must sit with one of us - we knew it was an A321 and so only 3 people could sit together. They assured us that this was no problem and the bookings had been flagged accordingly. When we came to do the on-line check-in malarky we couldn't even find two seats together, let alone three, so we phoned and asked them to check - they found the promise and gave us three adjacent checked-in seats and another elsewhere. When we arrived at the gate they told us the seats had been reassigned (yeah, right!) and each of my daughters was sitting next to male strangers.
The gate didn't give a flying dingo's kidney about what we had been promised, so I asked to have the captain's written confirmation that he accepted personal responsibility for any harm my daughters came to. I was obviously told to take a hike. So I called the airport police and explained the situation, saying that I felt the airline were not exercising their duties of care towards my children. Airport policeman agreed, and asked for the captain to be called to the gate. He put it to him straight - he was personally responsible, and if he refused to sign a statement to that effect then he would be interviewed under caution, or he could choose to address the problem by allowing my wife and daughters to sit together on the same row.
The captain said that he had not been told of the problem (I believed him) and OF COURSE young girls should not be required to sit between strangers on his aeroplane. As if by magic there was suddenly a free row of seats, with a free isle seat ion the other side.
So if you find yourself in this position the solution is pretty simple. The aircrew on here are always banging on about how the Captain has absolute authority over his/her aeroplane, so you just have to make it clear that with absolute authority goes absolute responsibility. So if your daughter suffers unwanted touching or or worse then the Captain will be a co-defendant in the subsequent criminal prosecution for sexual assault. The captain has absolute responsibility, and so if any crime is commited on his/her aeroplane the Captain should go to jail with the other criminals.
Fair enough?