Seat Allocations
 

Just wondering why airlines such as Easyjet and Ryanair don't allocate seats. Does is it save money? And if so how? As surely its all done on computer and may entail only a few extra keystrokes on keyboard.

Or is it so they can sell priority/speedy boarding?

Looking at other forums the rush for seats etc is one of biggest things people moan about.

It may be a mixture of these, but I think the main reason is it enables quicker boarding overall

It reduces complexity.
Complexity costs money.
Or time.
Which is money

Simple as that.

How complex can it be, other airlines have been allocating seats for years, its not as if new systems need to devised. Does it really speed up boarding? Every time i've flown with these two carriers there is always an almighty crush at the boarding gate with people fighting, well almost, to get to front of queue!

If you have a computer system that allocates seats, that costs money to buy and maintain. It costs hardware to run it on and then you have to print tickets. You have disputes at the check in desk of who wants to sit where and who booked what kind of seat on the web site. That takes time. Thus Money, Money, Money!

Also, if you have allocated seats, the pax will get mixed up as to where they are to sit and get shirty if they think that someone is in their seat (even if they cannot read their own boarding card. The CC have to sort out these problems and it is quicker (money!) to say "Sit where ever you wish".

Funny how Southwest manage to allocate seats, despite all these 'problems.'

And their model is the one that newcomers in Europe copied.

The tension around the pre-boarding scrum is why I've switched from Ryanair Gatwick to Aer Lingus Heathrow for my regular Dublin trips.

Jes
I tend to agree, at "my" airport it's close to fistycuffs at the gate coming up boarding time, and it's funny how many seemingly well educated Brits don't know their alphabet......
I travel both EZE and BA on the same route - I reckon there's sod all difference in the time it takes to board and get sat down because of the scrum around the gate and again on the aircraft with EZE.

Paxboy
IMHO "sit wherever you wish is fine" in an ideal world, if everyone just took a random seat, but they don't. Just about everyone wishes to sit at the front - so you get a massive backlog onto the jetty as people climb over pax in aisle seats to get into, for example 3A or 3F..they won't move a few rows back to the aisle empty seats and that's why on just about every departure you hear the EZE cabin crew pleading with passengers to move down the aircraft because there are plenty of seats at the back.

It certainly doesn't help the passengers, I find the whole Easyjet / Ryanair experience a nightmare for that reason: scrum round the gates at boarding and everyone trying to get a seat at the front. Wiggy's point is exactly right, the queue to get on the plane backs down the steps etc as those who bagged rows 1 - 5 faff about getting their seat.

Computer systems are cheap as chips these days, seat allocation software must be pretty old hat I'd have thought.

I always thought that the reason was that if you have your seat allocated then you hang around the airport buying that last bottle of whisky / having that final cup of coffee.

If you don't then you make sure you are at the gate nice and early.

Therefore allocated seats mean that you may have an aircraft sitting on the ground waiting for late passengers.

bmibaby are a loco who allocate seats, still manage to do a 25 minute turn round. The check in system is cheap as chips, but gets the job done.

Southwest uses open seating.
 

Uhm....Southwest doesn't allocate seats. They allocate boarding groups. They have done some testing of allocated seating in selected markets, but no announcement has been made that it will be adopted systemwide.

Boarding Procedure
Each Customer will be issued a boarding pass grouped by A, B, or C (in that order) based on when the Customer checked in online at southwest.com, at the Skycap Podium, Ticket Counter, Departure Gate, or E-Ticket Check-In kiosk (where available).

Prior to general boarding, Customers with disabilities, unaccompanied children between the ages of five and 11, and adults traveling with a child under five years of age will preboard. Customers who choose to preboard cannot sit in an emergency exit seat.

Because Southwest Airlines maintains an open-seating policy, general-boarding Customers may sit in any open or unclaimed seat. Customers holding boarding pass "A" will begin general boarding, followed by Customers with boarding pass "B," and then "C." General-boarding Customers who choose an emergency exit seat must meet all requirements set forth by the Federal Aviation Administration and Southwest Airlines.

I happen to work on behalf of a certain orange outfit and their so called priority boarding system is by no means fast!

4 boarding groups result in 4 announcements. Not to mention having to turn people away that "didn't understand" :ugh:

If you allocate seats, it can be done just as quickly. If you're boarding with front and rear steps, you advise which steps correspond to which rows in your announcement. If you're only using the L1 door then board the rear first, simple!

With the exception of Ryanair, (until the end of the year) all of the EU low-cost airlines are using a computerised Departure Control System, be it their native system, or that belonging to the handling agent. To create a flight that has Assigned seating requires nothing more than the touch of a button.

In my experience this is not the case. You will get late passengers whatever the outfit. 9 times out of 10 people who are late through their own stupidity couldn't give a to** about where they sit on the aircraft!

From SLF point of view, having flown most flavours of loco, there doesn't seem to be any difference in the time taken to actually board the aircraft, whether seats allocated or not. Locos out here, such as Jetstar Asia and Tiger Airways, use allocated seating. This is done using a laptop computer and small portable printer, the boarding pass is a flimsy piece of paper similar to some credit card receipts. There may be a small discussion at checkin if someone wants to sit with someone else, but nothing compared to the luggage repacking scrummage and dirty great long queues that are experienced at Stansted.

It's little things like this that enable the passengers to kid themselves for a moment that they might be flying a more expensive airline. Can't be a bad thing for the loco, at minimal cost.

For my sins I used to check-in FR flights:}

Sometimes when time and staffing levels were at a premium we would open up a flight on the system and check the passengers in via the computer. FR do not pay for this service but sometimes we would use it, FR found out, and put a stop to it. We didn't allocate seats just number the passengers like FR wanted us to, but they will not pay for the system to be used. Hence with most airports, other than those that have to have computerised check-in, it is a manual check-in. With this system it is near on impossible to allocate seats. So basically FR will not pay for it, allocation of seats can be done manually but it takes longer and so ups the cost to FR.

So as most on here may know, FR, do everything on the cheap, FD pay for their rating, CC pay for their training and uniforms.

:ugh:

With this system it is near on impossible to allocate seats.

Before computer check in, there was a very fast way of allocating seats.

The check in agent had a sheet with a graphic of the aircraft and each seat was represented by a sticky label, e.g. 5B.

When s/he allocated that seat to a pax, the sticky label was peeled off and affixed to the boarding pass.

Much faster than computerised check in these days (although not so thorough)

Maybe in the days of operating a 30 seater turboprop, but if you're checking in a Ryanair 738 with 189 seats you won't get away with one agent. This means the staff have to pass the sticky seat-plan back and forth amongst themselves which is hardly ideal.

The check-in system that I'm using is very quick. You don't even have to enter a seat number. You can simply hit W for window or A for aisle and it will seat the passengers to maintain an even bay split. If you have somebody who is particularly fussy about the row they want, then of course you can enter the exact seat. It's no extra hassle really!

Funnily enough, I used to work for a handling agent that decided to impliment their DCS on the Ryanair product simply because they were so fed up with all the errors caused by manual check-in.

It was all going really well until one day MOL checked in for a flight to Dublin and happened to notice that his boarding card was handed to him from a printer. I've never seen a man go so Red and use such foul language! Needless to say, we were back to pen and paper within the hour!

Bit of a thread creep, but does anyone know how Ryanair are handling the new requirements for APIS data on flights departing the UK and IRE for Spain?

TotalBeginner

30 seat turboprop?

I was thinking about the 747 classic, TriStar, DC10 all of which had rather more seats (and classes) than a 738.

Miraculously, they used to share the plan between desks without any of the huffle puffle you imagine.

You yoofs don't know much about how things used to be ;)

Actually, I remember in 2002, flying from Bridgetown Barbados with Airtours who were using manual check-in at the time and it was executed very well (A330). They had a giant concertina folder which was labelled alphabetically with pre-printed boarding cards in each slot. The seatplan was stuck on the wall behind the weigh scales.

It was quite funny, because passengers were literally choosing their own seats by pointing at the seatplan...down a bit, no, left a bit.... it really made me laugh! :}

I must confess I still prefer to use a DCS though :rolleyes: