Delta lost our business due to misleading seating plan

FRIDAY, JULY 22: Those of you who love travelling to Philadelphia have probably already heard the bad news this week.

US Airways Philly flight will be just once a week — Saturdays only — from November 29 through December 15. It will return to its normal daily schedule over the Christmas and New Year holidays from December 16 to January 3.

Starting January 4 through February 15 it will run a five-day a week schedule with no flights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

On February 16 it will return to its normal daily service.

Where are the seats?

I returned to Bermuda this week after a glorious week in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan visiting relatives. I didn’t purchase my tickets until last Wednesday and thought there were only a couple of seats left on my flights through Delta.

On the Saskatoon to Minneapolis flight I felt like I was in some version of the Twilight Zone. I had booked the nearest available seat to the front as I could and ended up in row 15.

After boarding the plane and everyone was buckled in, there was no one seated in front of me in the first 14 rows — 66 empty seats (36 in first class and another 30 in economy).

On my Boston to Bermuda flight, it showed just three seats available so I took an aisle seat in row 15. When I checked in the clerk asked me if I wanted to sit in an aisle or window seat, but when she checked there were still only three middle seats available.

She was shocked, but I thought that’s life. However, when the door closed for take off, there was around 50 seats available, with plenty of aisle or window seats there for the taking.

I asked Joe Amaral at C Travel as to what was going on in those situations.

Joe said that often when people book the cheapest ticket online, not every empty seat will show up as the airlines have the other seats priced higher.

He said some of the empties were also probably due to no shows, but that’s still a lot of seats with no people in them. In both cases, passengers who had the “cheaper” middle seats, moved to a window or aisle seat anyway.

That probably also explains when I had originally booked my tickets to go to Saskatoon, Delta was only showing middle seats available. Since I was travelling with my wife there, that wasn’t going to do as we wanted to sit together and we ended up booking through Air Canada.

In reality, there were probably plenty of seats next to each other, but because it didn’t show them as being available Delta lost our business.

Although, if we had booked through a travel agent, we probably could have gotten two seats together and spared us the nightmare we went through with Air Canada — but that’s a story for next week’s column.

Free American miles

KGB has teamed up with American Airlines to offer 100 free miles when you sign up for their newsletter.  KGB offers deals targeted for specific cities, so if you travel to New York or Miami mainly, you can select one of those areas. If you’re not interested in KGB clogging up your e-mail account, you can cancel after you get credited your miles, which should appear six to eight weeks after you sign up. Or you can create a web-based address on Gmail, Hotmail or the like, and just have all your junk e-mails like this go to that box when you sign up for stuff.

Miles update

In response to my column last week, a reader asked about how come when they signed up for the various free miles they did not show up in their account right away.

Normally, like the KGB offer above, they can take up to eight weeks to get processed and added to your total. I had 110 Aeroplan miles (Air Canada) added last week, but most of the 5,000 miles I signed up for have yet to show up.

Be patient — they will get there eventually.