In recent times, many airlines have adopted a pricing strategy where only a few seats are available for free during web check-in. The majority of seats – often those with better legroom or preferred locations – are marked as paid or premium.
Interestingly, if you skip the web check-in and directly check in at the airline counter a few hours before your flight, the same “premium” seats are often allotted without extra charge – simply because they are available at that moment. This shows that the seat selection process is less about exclusivity and more about timing.
The whole point of paying for seat selection in advance is to avoid uncertainty – to ensure a window, aisle, or front-row seat of your preference. But what happens when the flight is about to take off, all passengers have boarded, and yet many of those paid seats remain unoccupied?
Most airlines, in such cases, are flexible. If a passenger requests a change and it doesn’t cause any disruption, the cabin crew usually allows the switch. It improves the travel experience without impacting the airline’s revenue.
Unfortunately, this was not my experience with IndiGo on Flight 6E 6133 to Rajkot yesterday (19 June 2025). I had selected a middle seat during web check-in, as no free aisle or window seats were available. But once onboard, I noticed that several rows in front of me were completely empty. Naturally, I asked a crew member if I could move to one of those vacant seats.
Her reply:
“I’m sorry sir, those are paid seats. You can’t occupy them.”
I tried to reason with her – explaining that all passengers were already onboard, those seats were now empty, and allowing me to shift wouldn’t hurt anyone or the airline’s revenue. But she firmly declined. Maybe she wasn’t empowered to make that call. Or perhaps she was simply following protocol without being trained in how small gestures can lead to big impacts on customer satisfaction.
This isn’t a rant. It’s a suggestion.
In a hyper-competitive industry like aviation, customer experience can be a key differentiator. Empowering your front-line crew to make small, thoughtful decisions – especially when they come at zero cost – can go a long way in earning long-term customer loyalty and building brand equity.
What do you think?
Does empowerment at the grassroots level truly hold the key to unlocking superior customer experience and long-term loyalty?
-Sanjay Shah
SME Business Coach
#Indigo #CustomerExperience #CX #EmployeeEmpowerment #Brand #Equity #Rajkot