“Challenging check-in and lousy seats (exit row w/morning sun blinding us!)”
by stefitis on October 14, 2010
Flight from St. Louis to Miami
- Airline:
-
American
- RT/OW
- Round Trip
- Number of Stops:
- No stops
- Date of Flight:
- August 2010
- Seat Class:
- economy
Our flight was part of a vacation package through a discount provider and they neglected to preselect our seats. Upon calling the airline, we were told to go to the gate agent and they would have seats available to be assigned. We waited in a very long line for an agent to arrive and he was apparently running very late and he barked at everyone to have a seat because he was going to call everyone's names. We hesitated to do so because we were fourth in a line of fifty or so people. He repeatedly instructed everyone to go have a seat so he could begin calling names. We did so, grudgingly, as did most others (probably 2/3 of those waiting) and once we got seated he called one persons name then began waiting on the people who remained in line. Are you kidding me?! To make a long story even longer (sorry!)...we went and got back in line eventually and everyone had boarded except for maybe three other passengers by the time he assigned us seats. Our party of four was separated into two and two (could have been worse, I suppose) and we were seated in the exit row, so no overhead storage near us, and the early morning sun was directly in our eyes for most of the trip. Moral of the story...don't ever listen when a gate agent who is running late insists you be seated and your name will be called because it may never happen. We were actually afraid the plane was going to depart w/out us b/c boarding was basically over by the time we were finally assigned seats and allowed to board and then we had to deal with finding overhead space for our carry-ons. The air temp was very chilly and blanket "rental" was $10, but thankfully we had beach towels in our carry-ons and once we were allowed to move around we grabbed those. We were very, very happy we had our beach towels and sunglasses though! Good news is, the destination was amazing and made us forget about the agony of the flight! ;-)