Seat selections are extra most of the time. If I’m traveling on a budget the cost of the seat is the same as a meal so I don’t pick it

The worst offender is Turkish airlines that charges $40 per person per leg of trip, so I’d need to pay $160 to pick seats for my upcoming trip to SEA

Do you have a source on SW moving to assigned seats? That’s devastating news to me :(

So I don’t get all this. Everything I buy tickets, I choose my seats unless I fly southwest. And even they are going to move to assigned seats.

At least when my kids were young, you’d have to pay extra to pick a seat, at least if you purchased through Expedia or Travelocity.

And if so, do they not seat everyone in your reservation together?

You know how you print your boarding pass and it has your seats? When my kids were young on multiple trips via United, AA and Delta, the boarding pass would not have a seat assignment and we’d have to go the gate agent at every gate, even on the same airline if it was not a direct flight and get our seats assigned last minute. So no, we weren’t always seated together. On one flight, none of us were in the same row with anyone in our family.

Since we were scraping by back then we always booked months in advance for cheaper tickets. I thought originally it was a fluke with just United but after the next trip, I had learned to pay extra and pick seats ahead of time.

Lately, airlines tend to separate travellers who reserve together, probably so they’ll spend extra to change seats.

You’ve never flown budget airlines like Frontier, Spirit then. They’ll charge you $20-$100 to pick seats (per seat)

And also even on mainline carriers like American/Delta with Basic Economy fares they do much the same