Q – I thought you had written something a while back that indicated that an airline can give your seat away even after it is confirmed and you have it in writing. Can that be true?
A – Yes. The fine print on every ticket indicates that you have been assigned seats that can change. This does happen more than you might imagine for two primary reasons: The first is when there is a change of equipment. When that happens, airline computers will arbitrarily assign new seats based on the newly assigned aircraft’s seating plan. The other scenario when seats are changed without your knowledge has to do with the needs of one of the airline’s elite fliers. Airlines can and do give booked seats to their most frequent, million-mile fliers. This is one reason we always advise flyers to download the airline’s app to check from time to time that their assigned seats have not been changed.
