In Which I Pay to Choose My Airplane Seat

Right after I told you I wouldn’t do that.

Last week, I wrote about United’s new “Basic Economy” fares, and how I would totally take a fare cut in exchange for not being able to select a seat and not getting access to the overhead bins:

United Announces ‘Basic Economy’ Fares

Well. Here’s what happened when that theory met reality.

I bought my Christmas flights, since that’s the kind of thing you’re theoretically supposed to do before Thanksgiving, and Frontier Airlines (whose slogan might as well be “we serve the small Midwestern towns no one else does, so you’re stuck with us!”) took me to the seat selector screen and told me to select a seat.

For the first leg of the flight (SEA-DEN), economy seats cost either $30, $18, or $9, depending on their location.

There were no $0 seat options.

After some quick digging, I learned that I could choose not to select a seat and Frontier would put me in whatever seat was available after everyone else booked.

This is, essentially, the same deal United is making with its Basic Economy fares—but in this case, I hadn’t chosen to take a discount. I had chosen a standard economy ticket that I had assumed would come with the opportunity to choose my seat.

So, for whatever psychological reason I didn’t want to think about because it was just $9 or whatever, I bought a seat.

The second leg of the flight (DEN-CID) also asked me to choose a seat, and in this case the various prices were $20, $15, $6, $5, and $0.

I picked $0.

These two seat choices might qualify as rational economic behavior in terms of costs and gains, but there’s no way they qualify as logical choices. The $0 seats are the worst seats (middle seats, in the last rows), but I had no problem grabbing one when the choice was available to me. When not choosing a seat would mean I’d very likely get one of the worst seats on the plane, however, I elected to choose one — even though that choice cost me $9 and still put me in a relatively bad seat.

I guess we like the illusion of control so much that we’re willing to pay a little bit of money for it.

Or maybe we just hate air travel and would rather know in advance how bad it’s going to be, instead of waiting until we arrive to learn that we have the middle seat in the last row right next to the restrooms.

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