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Cabin crew can remove you from flights and gate agents can deny you boarding for disobeying rules.
Social media loves a travel hack. While some are clever, many are questionable – and a select few are so misguided they might even leave you stranded at the airport.In recent months, travel trends such as airport theory, seat squatting and playing ‘check-in chicken’ have taken the online world by storm. Are they genius shortcuts or guaranteed disasters? Euronews asked airline experts to weigh in.Spoiler: they’re not impressed.Airport theory: The fast track to missing your flightThe idea behind airport theory is simple: arrive at the airport as late as possible – ideally 15 minutes before departure – because airlines supposedly overestimate boarding times. If successful, it means less waiting and more time spent elsewhere.There’s just one problem: it’s a terrible idea, according to aviation experts. “Super dumb,” says Keith Van, a community manager at Seats.aero. “If you show up at the flight with 15 minutes or less to spare, it’s extremely stressful for the gate agent to process if you’ve already been offloaded and your seat has been given away.”And Van should know – he flies so often that he has earned ‘EuroBonus Millionaire’ status with the SkyTeam network, one of the world’s three major airline alliances. Gate agents, he adds, are very willing to offload absent passengers – and have every right to deny you boarding. And if you think there was a mistake made by the gate agent, Van assures you there almost certainly was not.“It’s nearly impossible to assign two people to the same seat under live reservation systems,” he explains.Airport theory can hit you where it hurts – your wallet“Even if this hack works nine times out of ten – it won’t – that tenth time won’t be worth the hassle. You will have to book a new flight, but certain destinations have limited flights, and they may be full,” adds Addie, a long-haul flight attendant for a major airline who asked to use a pseudonym.“If you have not boarded by the time boarding closes, ground staff will not hesitate to offload you. Airlines pay enormous amounts for gate rental, and every minute longer than necessary the aircraft sits at the gate, the more money it costs the airline.”Rather than a hack, airport theory could be an extremely effective way to end up paying for a whole new flight.Why seat squatting is a one-way ticket to argumentsIf you want an upgrade without paying for it, sit in a better seat and hope nobody notices.That’s the logic behind seat-squatting, a trend where passengers occupy more desirable seats – extra legroom or a window view – and wait to see if anyone challenges them. But those seats almost certainly belong to someone else.“On fuller flights these days, that seat has already been probably booked by someone else,” says Van. “If it leads to an argument, the flight attendant on board will always check boarding passes to see who is supposed to sit where.”And when flight attendants tell you to move, you must listen to them.“If you don’t, you’re breaking aviation laws in many jurisdictions, and the captain or crew can boot you off the flight,” he adds.If you refuse to follow the rules, you might be met by police once you’re off the plane.Flight attendants will not hesitate to remove you for breaking the rules“I can tell you personally that if a passenger was refusing to move from someone else’s seat to their own I would not allow them to fly,” says Addie.“As a condition of carriage, which every person agrees to when booking their flight, cabin crew need to be confident that passengers will follow instructions in an emergency, so an inability to follow a simple instruction like ‘sit in the seat you were assigned’ is reason enough to be removed from the flight.”There are several valid safety reasons for following the rules, she says. Seat squatting, for example, can disrupt a plane’s weight balance.“Different zones in the aircraft are required to have different proportions of passengers depending on the weight of the freight being carried in the hold. When you hear the announcement saying that the flight crew are completing their paperwork, this is one of the things they’re checking,” she explains.If you want to move after take-off and the seat belt signs have been turned off, just ask a flight attendant. Otherwise, she says, sit where you’re told.‘Check-in chicken’ is like playing roulette with your seat assignment‘Check-in chicken’ is a kind of game that has gone viral on social media where travellers deliberately wait until the last possible moment to check in, hoping to score an unsold premium seat instead of being assigned the middle seat of doom.It’s high risk, high reward, according to experts, with an emphasis on the risk.“This is actually real,” admits Van.“Many carriers do random seat allocation. Low-cost carriers like Ryanair will allocate middle seats to passengers to entice them to buy upgrades. Even legacy carriers [might] save unsold rows with extra legroom until last. They may even check you in but designate you as an unselected seat and leave it to the gate agent to assign your seat.”But not every airline follows these practices. US-based Southwest Airlines, for example, designates seat priority by check-in time – all the more reason not to buy into airport theory.Some airlines that offer upgrades may use check-in time as a tie-breaker, too. So if you check in late, it may cost you a bump to a better seat, Van adds.Don’t believe everything you see on TikTokIn the hierarchy of travel hacks, some ideas are genuinely useful. Addie recommends wearing compression socks on long flights to prevent deep-vein thrombosis – a potentially fatal form of blood clotting – and drinking lots of water to stay hydrated, as it aids recovery.Other hacks, such as airport theory or playing check-in chicken, are more likely to annoy airline staff, delay flights or leave you stranded. At worst, they can put you and your fellow passengers at risk.“The most important thing to remember is that the cabin crew is there for your safety. Customer service is not our primary job,” Addie explains. “If you are being asked to do something, there is a reason behind it.”To put it another way: if a travel hack sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
