"Preferred Seats, Priority Boarding"

Now this may come off as a rant, but I the bone to pick with the airlines these days.


More and more airlines are claiming that foreword seats in coach, the ones right behind first-class, are  "preferred" seats. This includes middle seats. Are these seats necessarily better than any other seat on the aircraft? No I don't think so. And now airlines are taking a large percentage of these seats, classifying them as preferred seats, and making people pay for the seat assignments. This to me is what I call highway robbery. The only seats that are "preferred" seats on an aircraft are the ones in first-class in my opinion.

The worst part about this is that a lot of times after paying for a preferred seat, I will be sitting next to somebody who didn't have to pay for the seat, and got placed in that seat when they got to the gate at the airport. The craziest thing these days that I've seen is what United and Continental are doing now. They're going to begin setting it up so that you can no longer reserve economy seats in advance. You'll be able to reserve your seat, but you will not get a seat assignment until you get to the airport.

I have recently heard that the airlines are making $1.5 billion from travelers on extra fees and charges. This is the craziest thing in the world to somebody like me. I stayed loyal to my airline through the ups and downs, the highs and lows. I understood when the tickets were costing more because fuel prices were high. My question is when everything went back to normal, why didn't all of the extra fees go away? Why are people still paying for things like bags, food, change fees to change flights, and early boarding fees?

And this is the last of my rant. Early boarding fees make absolutely no sense to me. People are paying up to $25 to board the aircraft earlier than other people. I can only assume this is because they would like to ensure that they have a place for their luggage on the aircraft. The problem with this is that it probably costs almost the same amount check the bag before you get onto the plane. In these types of situations I would highly recommend just giving yourself some extra time and getting down to the airport earlier. The plane will leave when everyone is seated, people!!