航班选座位的学问

Airline Seats Available for Elite Fliers Only

航班选座位的学问

When airline customers try to choose seats while purchasing tickets, what they see may not be what they can get.

许多飞机乘客喜欢在购票的同时选择座位，但所见和所得并不相同。

Airlines routinely block coach seats for a variety of reasons, reducing the pool of available seats to reserve free of charge in advance when you book a trip.

基于诸多因素，航空公司常会锁定一些经济舱座席，这使得人们在预定机票时可以提前免费预留的座位有所减少。

On many flights now, 30% to 40% of coach seats are held back by the airline for premium customers, people with special needs or available only for a fee. Facing what look like, but often aren't, high odds of getting a lousy seat at check-in, sitting apart from children or even getting bumped from an overbooked flight, many travelers feel pressured to pay for a reserved seat.

如今在许多航班上，航空公司会为贵宾乘客和有特殊需求的乘客预留30%到40%的经济舱座位，普通乘客预定则需要付费。面对可能出现的情况（可能性看似很高，其实通常来说并非如此），例如办理登机时被分配到糟糕的座位、和自己的孩子分开坐甚至由于航班超额预定而坐不上这趟飞机，许多旅客倍感压力而选择付费订座。

That pressure has increased as airlines have expanded the number of seats they block from early assignment and added more rows of extra-legroom coach seats, which are offered free or at a discount to elite-level frequent fliers but sold to others. Airlines say all the seats they block or assign for a fee are

opened up shortly before departure and customers without advanced seat assignments almost always get accommodated. There is a higher risk of getting involuntarily bumped off flights if you don't have a seat assignment, but it is rare.

如今这种压力更大了，因为航空公司将更多座位划分在了可提前预留的范围之外，并增加了多排加长了伸腿空间的座位，这些座位会免费或打折提供给贵宾常旅客，而向普通旅客则需要收费。航空公司表示，他们锁定的或者收费的座位都会在起飞前不久全部开放，没有优先分配座位的乘客一般总还是会得到安置。此时如果没分到座位，坐不上这趟航班的风险更高，不过这种情况很少见。

Doug Berg, a frequent business traveler from Detroit, was surprised to see the only spots open in coach were Economy Plus seats with extra legroom for a United Airlines flight from Denver to Spokane, Wash., in May. He had a seat for his Detroit-to-Denver leg, but didn't realize his travel agent hadn't been able to reserve a seat for the flight to Spokane until he went to check in online and print boarding passes.

道格·伯格(Doug Berg)来自底特律，商务出行非常频繁。5月份他搭乘美国联合航空（United Airlines）的航班由丹佛飞往华盛顿斯波坎(Spokane)，他惊讶地发现，经济舱内开放的都是拥有加长伸腿空间的豪华经济舱座席。在从底特律到丹佛的航程中，他订到了一个座位，但直到他在线办理登机并打印登机牌时，才知道旅行代理人未能帮他在飞往斯波坎的航班上预留座位。

Worried he might get bumped, which would have been a huge problem, since it was a night flight and he had to be at work at 7 a.m. the next day, he paid United an extra $44 to reserve an Economy Plus seat.

他很担心自己会无法登机，这将是个大麻烦，因为那是夜间航班，而他必须在第二天早上七点开始工作。于是他多付了44美元预定了豪华经济舱的座位。

At the airport, kiosks showed lots of available free seats in the economy section of the Boeing 737. At the gate, Mr. Berg polled fellow passengers about