A baffled parent was left stunned when their daughter was accused of breaking the law for booking an extra seat on a flight. The dismayed social media user shared their story online as they panicked over their 17-year-old daughter being stranded in a foreign country when the flight attendant cancelled her flight home over the incident. Keen to know other people's experiences and what they could do about the situation the poster explained the confusing outcome of the trip.
They wrote: "First this is not my story but my daughter's. In the USA during the incident. So my daughter just left to go overseas with other family members/ friends, four people total. The [person who paid for the trip] bought herself a first-class ticket and then four seats for the other three people to give them a little more space since two of them were a little larger.
The flight attendant told the passenger they were breaking the law"They used their boarding passes including the pass for the extra seat. Everything went fine for the first leg of their trip. They had a layover before getting on another flight. Once boarding the second flight they got settled before a flight attendant saw the empty seat and told them to scoot together so she could seat someone else in the row."
The Reddit post continued: "They tried to explain they had the ticket for the empty seat. The flight attendant then told them that since it was an international flight it was against international law to buy the extra seat and they could either move or be thrown off the plane. So not wanting to get thrown off they scooted in.
"Once arriving at their destination they found out the flight attendant had cancelled their return flights. My daughter (17) is currently thousands of miles from me without a return flight. First is it really illegal to buy extra seats on an international flight? Second, what can be done about the lost cost of the seat that was paid for?
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"Is the airline just getting paid twice for the same seat? Can they cancel return flights over this without a real reason? The airline's website says extra seats can be bought for comfort and privacy on both domestic and international flights."
Other social media users then joined the post as they shared their opinions on the situation. One user said: "This is correct. The legal issue is the name associated with the spare seat because of the requirement that the manifest be accurate in the event of an emergency/disaster."
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A second explained: "The flight attendant didn't cancel the return, the system did, likely because one seat was not checked in properly. How did the person buying the tickets, set up the extra seat? You can't just slap a name on it, there are procedures that have to be followed so that precisely this kind of thing doesn't happen.
"Your recourse now is with the airline. Call them, keep calm and cool and find out exactly what happened and why. See what they can do to reinstate the return reservations and compensate you for the ticket. Don't be afraid to walk it up the chain with the airline. Unfortunately this kind of thing does happen, but for now it's a customer service issue."
A third commented: "Just did this on an international 12 hour RT flight to London. Booked the extra economy seat under my daughter’s name so she could stretch out on the long flight. There was an option to “buy extra seat” or something and then the booking system asked “who is this seat for” in our party.
"When boarding, they pulled us out of line and manually checked her passport that she was one person with 2 seats. We had a boarding pass labeled extra seat with her name along with her boarding pass also with her name. It was not a problem either direction. This was on United. We used a credit not cash to buy the extra seat."
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