New Etihad Seat Assignment Policy & Fees

EY is doing a huge leg up to appeal their cost conscience market of South East Asia *facepalm*

No wonder with such DL level initiatives, their proposed new growth strategy will be a money making succsss.

I thought that most airlines are trying to make the process easier not confusing. Go figure.

Mind numbing.

I believe currently Emirates still lets you choose seat selection upon check-in (or with a certain fare class ticket). Etihad better reduce prices to make sure it's competitive enough. Surely their Economy product is not much better than other ME3 carriers.

Nice revenue generation model: assign the worst possible economy seat to the first person checking in, wait for them to pay to move to a better seat, assign the same bad seat to the next available passenger, rinse, repeat...

Sometimes I fly (U)LCCs, and there I expect nickel and diming. Sometimes I fly full service airlines because -- go figure -- on those trips I'm looking for the full service experience. When a full service carrier does stuff like this, I'm left wondering why I'm paying the higher fare.

They're making you pay for everything little thing. What's confusing about that?

If I don't pay for a seat on top of ticket money , Does that mean I have to stand!

You will assigned a (presumably bad) seat.

If (hypothetically) you are happy with a middle seat anywhere why would you consider paying for an assigned seat?
Chances are an assigned seat at check-in would be no worse, and possibly better!

Issues with assigned seats for everyone not paying is whether you do that at the moment one checks in or at a certain cut off time. If the former, which Ryanair currently does, passenger could play around it by checking in as late as possible - obviously the later the better seat; if the latter, which BA currently does, then the airline can’t really sell seats after that cut off time because everyone will have a seat then and probably most paid seats are already occupied.

Thank you Etihad, I await the privilege of being allowed to pay to not stand, a glance at the bottle of water, and you can for sure sign me up for the $50 premium to be treated like a human being and have the flight attendants look me in the eye as I eat my slop from the dog bowl I graciously paid $30 for.

I welcome this nickle and dime revenue model. Slowly but surely, you'll be up there with the great low-cost carriers like Ryanair

You will be able to select seats free of charge within 4 hours of flight departure or change them if you've already been assigned some.
A lot of people don't care where they sit, but those who do will have to pay. I don't see the problem, as long as I'm seated next to the people from the same booking

Is this after check-in or when you check-in 4 hours before departure?

i have a low class ticket. from bangkok to rome i selected my seat. return i could not select a seat so i cancel m ticket.

also, in the back they had seat with the middle seat missing. soit went seat-no-seat-seat. why no seat. what is in the middle.