Business/Premium Economy/Economy ratios
 

Flew yesterday from SVG to LHR on SAS.

I had a lot of changes to my itinerary during this week one of which was to change my return flight from today to yesterday. I could not get an economy seat returning and ended up forking out an extra £300 for premium economy, fair play my fault I thought as I did not book flexible tickets.

My original return fare was about £500.00 so now am up to about £800 for the return trip.

When boarding last night noticed that the last row only (Boeing737-300) - yes 6 seats - were economy, the bulk of the rest being premium economy and at front a few rows business. On my outbound flight at least the last 3 rows were economy!

The boundary between economy and premium economy was a little plastic sign stuck on the headrest of the seats, clearly moveable and the difference in service a light snack or nothing. Seat pitch appeared to be the same.

Many of the premium economy seats were empty - is this normal practice for this airline or were they scamming a few extra bucks due to the Oil and Gas show in Stavanger?

Airlines aren't charities, nor a branch of social services. It isn't their job to offer seats for the minimum possible price. Their job is to try to screw out of each passenger the maximum amount of money that they are prepared to pay (as opposed to "would prefer to pay").

You're a case in point. You were prepared to pay another £300 because you had to get back. It's the airline's duty to part you from that money. (Seriously: It owes that duty to its shareholders to do it.)

If one tactic to achieve this is to reduce the number of economy seats on the aircraft, and make more seats available in premium economy than it can sell, then that's perfectly legitimate. It's not a scam.

Sorry if the word "scamming" was a touch robust.

It still stinky from here, I truly understand revenue issues. I used to be a valued employee now am, alas, a mere number.

Twas the moveable headrest thingy that got my goat!