06/07/2014

There is a convention among some of the more unpleasant European budget airlines to abstain from seating allocation in the ticket purchase process. In contrast to the friendlier airlines (which allow you to select your own seat for an additional cost if you wish, but will randomly assign you a seat if not), the nasty ones like to keep you guessing.

I can’t say I fully understand this system. If they were conspiring to overbook their flights, unconscionable though it would be, it’d make sense to eschew allocation in order to avoid brawling between the three people with 11F written on their boarding passes. But in my experience, even the really nasty European ones are not in the habit of overbooking (thank god). So what then is their reasoning? Do they feel the cheapness of the flight should mean that customers are subjected to entirely avoidable queuing, in order to reduce the quality of their experience to the appropriate level of awful?

Because inevitably, queuing is the result of this system. Long queues, which begin to form the instant the boarding gate is announced. The nearby ranks of seats remain vacant, as passengers watchfully conserve their queue position, elbows primed in anticipation of any opportunistic dashes forward by those standing behind.

It’s not pleasant, but it seems to be an accepted part of some budget airline experiences. Which is why I believe the realisation I made staring at one such queue in Luton Airport today constitutes a revelation. The queuing suggests to me that passengers place value on the seats themselves, and trust that the forfeit of standing in a queue for an hour will be amply compensated by an exceptional seat. But they forget that, generally speaking, all the seats on the plane are more or less identical. In fact, usually there are no really rubbish seats – there are only rubbish people.

Recognising this fact is, if anything, the key to a successful flight. If you end up next to a snorer, a sneezer or a psychopath, you’ll find the joy of having scored a window seat provides scant consolation for your lack of sleep, lack of sleep, or terror.

So pick people, not seats. The beauty of this ethos is that you can only pick your people if they’ve already sat down – which means the perfect time to board is after just about everyone else has. Goodbye queuing!

I fell into one of the chairs to the side and consumed my Swedish meatball wrap from Pret in exquisite sedentary comfort. After the queue had shrunk to an acceptable size, I skipped up to join it, boarded the plane, sat next to a kindly-looking elderly couple and slept all the way back to Hamburg. Take that, Michael O’Leary!

An artist's impression. I'm the cheery one in the red top.

Word of the day: sinngemäß