It is first class for poor people.
An airline passenger has sparked outrage online after describing a controversial trick that allows passengers to have an entire row of seats to themselves. In a Reddit post that made waves online, he described the high-altitude shortcut.
The Redditor said he learned about the hack while trying to find optimal seating options for a flight from the US to Venice. Since he couldn’t afford premium upgrades, he wanted to find comfortable accommodation without breaking the bank.
They learned about a new trick: instead of the usual two seats next to each other, two fellow travelers book a window seat and an aisle seat, so that the middle seat remains free.
“People keep telling me to do the ‘seat hack’ where you leave the middle seat empty in the hope that no one books it,” the Reddit user wrote. “If you do that, how often does it work?”
In theory, this configuration is intended to discourage solo flyers from reserving the middle seat, which is often considered the worst seat on the plane.
This supposedly also deters other couples who want to sit together and allows passengers to get three seats for the price of two.
Unfortunately, many amateur air travel experts doubted the effectiveness of this method, which literally ends the book.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said one. “I see empty middle seats so often at check-in that the plane is always full.”
Another agreed: “The flights seem to be pretty fully booked at the moment, I doubt it will work.”
The airline’s employees also contradicted this theory.
“It’s a gamble,” explained one alleged “crew member.” “Flight load factors are pretty high this year and most of my transatlantic flights were 68 to 80 percent full.”
They added: “All basic employee economy and standby travel is added at the last minute and that’s usually where your bet goes down.”
An air travel expert revealed a supposedly more effective seat hack that “worked every time.”
The catch is that the traveler has to take a long-haul flight with three rows of seats and a center section in the middle.
“You both reserve an aisle seat in the middle 3-seat section, one directly in front of the other,” they explained. “The idea is that the remaining 2 seats in the middle section are booked by people traveling together.”
The airline expert added: “If the person in the middle has to stand up, they will most likely crawl over their travel companion and not over you. Bonus if the middle seat remains empty.”
While this trick prevents the traveling duo from sitting together, they are close enough to each other and both have “direct aisle access.”
