September 27th, 2006
I took a relatively uneventful Northwest Airlines flight from New York to Minneapolis this afternoon, and was delighted to find that (unlike most flights these days), it was only half full. Lots of empty aisle seats, and even a few empty window seats. Nevertheless, the automated “kiosk” check-in system at LaGuardia assigned me a middle seat.
I didn’t even notice the assignment until I reached the gate and looked at my boarding ticket. Thinking that perhaps the flight involved a mid-size jet with only two seats on each side of the aisle, I asked the gate agent whether seat 11-B was an aisle or a middle seat. When she confirmed that it was indeed a middle seat, I asked if it would be possible to get it changed to a window or aisle seat. With a smile and a few keystrokes on her terminal, she did just that.
I assumed I had been granted a special favor until I boarded the plane and subsequently observed where everyone was seated after we took off. So what’s going on here? Why would Northwest’s seat assignment algorithm deliberately punish me — or anyone else — by assigning them a middle seat when it must have been completely obvious that there were still several preferable seats available? Was it a programming bug, just plain stupidity on the part of the system developers, or revenge upon travelers like me who don’t have a Northwest frequent-flyer account?
I wish we road warriors could somehow reverse engineer the seat-assignment algorithms used by all the major airlines, so we would have a better idea of which ones are friendly (i.e., leaving middle seats empty until absolutely necessary), and which ones are unfriendly. For now, I’ve got one more reason why Northwest is at the bottom of my list of preferred airlines.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Many airlines now let you select a seat through their website, or at least at checkin. I never trust the airline and always look for better seats myself. (I think JetBlue does have a more intelligent algorithm.)
September 30th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
There are more algorithms in business that make no sense than we can believe. I’m talking about the rules of everyday behaviour in the shop. For instance, we just finished some mall-walking as part of my wife’s physical therapy. Had to stop by Williams-Sonoma and Brookstone to check out the cool stuff. Start planning for holiday shopping.
However, the employees nearly drove me out of the places by repeatedly and insistently asking “Can I help you find something?” Many queries from the same employee, in many cases. This is obviously part of the training - the rules of behaviour - the algorithm of daily operations. It did not enhance my experience, and made me rethink my holiday shopping plans.