All the seats were full

I had to make a quick trip recently for a funeral, and was lucky enough to get the last couple of seats on a flight period.

(FYI, just booking a normal fare as soon as you know when the funeral will be is often cheaper than “funeral fares”, which I’m not even sure all airlines offer. But it pays to call the airlines and ask.)

Anyway, I tried to get our seat assignments when I bought the tickets, but it said that seat assignments would be made at check in. I thought nothing of it at the time.

When I went to check in prior to leaving for our trip, I was surprised to see that some of the seats on the seating chart had little dollar signs on them. Apparently you could pay to sit in a seat with a little more leg room. (Google tells me this is called Economy Plus.) But there were still two seats in the very back of the plane without dollar signs, so I selected those and moved on.

On the way back home, however, every single non-dollar-sign seat was taken. The only options left were to pay extra. I felt a little panicked — like we might not even get on the plane if we didn’t pay — but put it out of my mind and skipped seat selection.

Happily, they did assign seats to us at the gate, and we got on the plane just fine. But I wonder how many people go ahead and pay the extra amount out of fear.