How much does seat selection COST the airlines?

[preiffer]

I have a few thoughts of my own as to why this is attractive, BUT it would worry me if it became a trend:

Air Canada have a special offer right now:

Let us seat you. You’ll save up to £20 on your next trip to Canada. Skip the seat selection option when you book your next trip to Canada online. Let us assign you a seat and you’ll save up to £20 on a round-trip ticket. That’s basically the cost of the boat ride for four at Niagara Falls. Nice!

Once you've given up your seat assignment option, it's final - you cannot through love/money/other get it back.

So, could they be onto a loser here or ahead of the pack? [:?]

[mitchja]

It just sounds like a marketing ploy to me.

It's just another way of saying 'with our lowest fares you dont get to select your seat' BMI do it......but yes I can see what you are saying - why pay the airline more for a seat selection option at the time of booking. It's just an added convience tax.

Regards

[preiffer]

Almost seems to be that way James.

They have two "low end" fares - "Leisure" and "Tourist".

Tourist is non-changeable, no mileage, no seat selection. This offer applies to Leisure fares (which are mileage earning, changeable for a fee, and include seat selection) for the option of discarding the seat option upfront.

Seat selection certainly costs... mainly in time.

If you think of the ammount of time spent trying to seat people together at check-in... multiply this by the thousands of daily passengers and then think of how many hours of check-in agents this takes worldwide...

One of the reasons airlines are very keen to use OLCI even if they don't have home boarding card printing available.

Can't see this being copied at VS though... mainly as they've gone down the OLCI route to remove this 'cost' as far as can be.

[HighFlyer]

Originally posted by V-Ben
Seat selection certainly costs... mainly in time.

If you think of the ammount of time spent trying to seat people together at check-in... multiply this by the thousands of daily passengers and then think of how many hours of check-in agents this takes worldwide...

Ben, i certainly appreciate this, but ... isnt that what check-in is there for? [:?]

Airlines want people to use OLCI to save money. I dont use OLCI as i prefer to speak to a human, and also on the few occasions i have used OLCI or self service counters (for non-VS flights) there seems to be a real lack of staff to help if you encounter difficulties (UA anyone?)

Just my $0.02 ...

Thanks,
Sarah

Originally posted by HighFlyer
I dont use OLCI as i prefer to speak to a human

I actually agree with you... though for domestic/euro business day trips I LOVE full OLCI... and BA really have this sorted to a T.
But for long-hauls I think a big part of the experience is the interaction with staff.

I was simply trying to offer an explanation for the cost behind this.

Will be interesting to see what BA do at T5... rumour has it traditional check-in gets the boot entirely!!!

[preiffer]

UA have pretty much binned "check-in" at ORD. Unless you have a problem or customer service issue, you HAVE to use the "Mr Chicken" machines and do the fast bag drop - they're even encouraging it for passengers flying First.

I actually agree with you... though for domestic/euro business day trips I LOVE full OLCI... and BA really have this sorted to a T.
But for long-hauls I think a big part of the experience is the interaction with staff.

Agree BA have their OLCI system working very well - then it all goes to pot with fast bag drop - LGW last week, queue longer than for normal check in!

I agree with Paul - I always confirm seat with OLCI on VS then go to see a real human, a smile and a chat starts the day off better than a machine.

I much prefer checking-in the "old-fashioned way"[:I]

VS.