sebastian, if you have flown so much, surely you realize that airline seats are assigned and printed on your boarding pass. how would you know when you entered the aircraft that the seat you chose in business was not assigned to someone else? (as you said, the aircraft was still boarding while this discussion was going on.)
also, if you have flown a lot, you will know that cabin staff are not authorized to change seats (from one class to another; obviously people can and do move within a class of service if there are open seats), even after doors are closed and there are spare seats. i believe that is true of every airline around the world. the ground staff, with access to the computers can change seats, and when they do, they print you a new boarding pass.
yes it was a clusterf*** day and maybe cx did make mistakes. maybe you should have had a j seat instead of y. but really man, it is your responsibility to sort that out before you get on the plane. maybe the guy was rude and maybe he could have handled the thing better. but if it were me i would have either a) sucked it up and realized i was not gonna sit in j with a y seat allocation or b) waited til the next flight and sorted it out on the ground.
and fyi, i am not a professional pilot, but i am a pilot and fly small planes. i can tell you that in airline culture, safety is everything. also, as other posters pointed out, the impact of a delay is not just for the folks on that flight, but for other folks waiting in taipei for the return flight, who have connections, for other flight crew etc etc. the cascade effect is massive. so that is why they are going to be strict with one passenger who is holding things up because he/she does not want to sit in the seat printed on the boarding pass. the people charged with getting the flight off on time do not know and cannot know about the series of mistakes that caused you to believe you had the wrong seat.
just my two cents!
Last edited by bigjames; 2nd Jan 2012 at 09:32.
Reason: really sloppy typing!