Bravo!! I couldn't have said that better myself. I love it when an attorney responds to me with "That Sucks"!! I mean, no mincing words here. *smile* Thank you for saying it like it is and really telling me how you feel. Love it, love it, love it!! And you know why he said that? Because I told him, that for a flight on November 1st, I was not able to pre-assign an aisle for him and here it is September 21st. Thank goodness his wife is travelling with him and she prefers the window and he was ok with that. I don't mind monitoring to see if I can improve seats, but thank you for being willing to set in the center seat next to your wife, because that's one less reservation I need to monitor daily to try and improve seating assignments. Some folks don't even get a seating assignment this far in advance or are stuck in the last row, non-reclining center seat.
It's not just one airline either!! They all suck!! So what else is new. They're all jumping on this same band wagon, blocking aisle seats out and making people pay just a little bit more to get those preferred seats!! Sometimes you can get them outside of 24 hours, sometimes you have to wait and do it no sooner than 24 hours, sometimes if you are a "super duper" frequent flyer with that airline, you can get the preferred seats outside the 24 hour window unless other "super duper" frequent flyers already beat you to it. Some airlines let you buy a membership which is good for a year which allows you to pre-assign the premium seats, even though you might not be a "super duper" frequent flier. The airlines keep getting richer all the time, finding new ways to extort money out of the traveller and companies, yet they're always crying poor house!! I guess I wouldn't be complaining if I was married to one of these CEO's of the airlines, but I'm not. They keep finding new and innovative ways to pad their pockets!! And they sure hit the mark when they realized what people would do to get an aisle seat!! Ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chink!!
Aside from that, but still relevant, another thing which really ticks me off is when you book an airline ticket online (for whatever reason) for a passenger and you don't get to hear the bad news about "airport check in only" for advanced seat selection until AFTER you've bought the nonrefundable ticket!! Grrrrrrrrr, what a ripoff!! That surely sucks!! Geez, why don't they just do away with the frequent flyer miles program too. That would surely start WWIII *rollin' my eyes* amongst our nations frequent traveller's. The airlines have taken all of the other amenities away. If a person really really wants to fly first class and be guaranteed a first class seat on an international flight, they can expect to pay $10,000.00 for a round trip. So you can bet that the majority of folks who are seated in first class on international flights are all "super duper" frequent fliers on that airline, but chances are they either used miles to upgrade or during the online check in process, they were offered a super deal to upgrade from a 2000.00 round trip ticket for an extra 1000.00. Sure beats 10K for a guaranteed first class seat!! I can't even begin to keep up with these airlines. Their game rules change daily and none of them are exactly the same. Even Air Tran is charging for certain aisle seats. 15.00 here and 15.00 there.