For the past few years, I've traveled to US using Delta Airlines. Never had an issue with them, nothing exciting to write home about. So this year, when I booked my tickets for the SHOT Show, I used Delta again. Then a couple of days ago, I went to their web site to book myself a seat.
I always prefer aisle seats during those long travels, so imagine my surprise when I noticed that the only seats available in the plane (the flight was due about 10 days later) were middle seats, all "D" seats. For those not familiar with the Boeings used by Delta on this flight, they come in an arrangement of 2-3-2 seats per row. The "D" seat is the middle seat in the three-seats middle section. No window seats, no aisle seats AT ALL. That was for the Athens-to-JFK flight. In all subsequent flights (JFK to Las Vegas, Las Vegas to JFK and JFK to Athens again, there were plenty of differnt seats to choose from.
Now, this may be normal for US, where people are used to book their tickets and seats on-line, but for Greece, where less than 12% of the population have a computer and much less have Internet access, didn't exactly looked right. So I called Delta in Athens, like I've done in the past. Only this time, there was an Air France call center that answered my call. It appears that Delta has partnered with Air France/KLM here in Greece (or possibly in all Europe). So the agent I was speaking with told me that, yes, that's the way it is, there are only D seats available. "Some seats are reserved for distribution during check-in" she added.
So let me see: while everywhere else in the world, airlines prefer people to book their tickets on-line, reserve their tickets on-line, even check-in on-line, Delta in Greece, prefers me to stand in a queue to manually check-in and get the aisle seat I want.
How clever is that? Who's the genius behind this decision? I never had this problem before, so I have to assume that this is a decision of their handlers in Greece (Air France and KLM).
Needless to say, I wrote to Delta and complained about this, but haven't heard back from them yet.
I'll keep you posted when I hear from them, if I hear from them.
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