Project Earl

[honey lamb]

on my last flight I paid the £30 and sat in a purple row seat, the rest of the row was empty, until after take off when a couple came to sit in the row.
I have no idea if they paid the extra or not but they werent questioned or moved. The (rather large) lady took the seat next to me, and her husband took the seat at the other end of the row, leaving a space between, which meant they actually had 3 seats to spread out while I was squashed in mine next to the lady.

In which case I would have discreetly spoken to the cabin crew to ensure their entitlement

We landed back this morning on VS44 from Vegas. Frankly it was chaos at the back of the plane. We were happy in 62 H & K but even before take off people were wandering around the plane looking for free seats, the 3 rows of 4's next to us went and people were moving into the extra leg room purple seats. The flight crew repeatedly asked people to take their allocated seats but no one took any notice. Soon most of the extra legroom seats were taken and I'm sure no one paid anything.

One time flying IAD-LHR on a very light overnight flight, the CC made an announcement along the lines of...

"As I'm sure you're aware, tonight's flight is fairly empty... there are only ~120 passengers on this Airbus A340 that seats ~300 passengers. We welcome you to move around and spread out once we are in the air, but to please wait until we have made the announcement"

Then once we were in the air...

"At the moment we are leveling off and if anyone wants to switch seats we welcome you to do that now. But please move slowly as to no disrupt the balance of the planes for the pilots."

Of course, this was all done in a well-spoken FA voice. Anyway, are days like this gone and now everyone has to sit in their allocated seat?

This particular example was nice. I scored 4 seats across in the middle and got some good sleep that flight! y)

[honey lamb]

Generally speaking passengers are free to move around their particular cabin during flight if the loads are light but are requested to return to their allocated seats for landing