In my current role I do a fair bit of domestic AirNZ travel, typically to-from Auckland and Napier for work.
Lately the AirNZ check in computers have been automatically assigning me to the emergency exit row – something that would make most people happy, but which annoys me insanely.
Like any geek, I’m never off my laptop for long – this includes flights, which I often use as an occasion to read emails and formulate replies whilst stuck without connectivity.
And this is where the emergency exit becomes a problem – the seats lack the typical storage space of the seat infront, which gives me no place for my bag and laptop on the flight, I hate having my fragile electronics up in the overhead to shake around with people’s over-sized carryon “bags” (more like suitcases) and other rough objects, plus the lack of easy access during the flight is a real hassle.
Logically, this shouldn’t be a problem – I can just select a seat when checking in – but sometimes I’m in a hurry and forget to check what seat has been allocated – in which case, the check in computer allows me to check in but half way through the process advises me that it is an emergency seat.
If I select “no” to the emergency seat, the computer just dumps my session and spits out an “assistance card” which I have to then take to check in staff in order to complete the process.
Finally I then have to deal with check in staff arguing with me telling me that the emergency seat is “better”, as determined by their broken metrics of normality.
JUST STOP ARGUING AND JUST ASSIGN A DIFFERENT SEAT FFS. Oh and fix your computers so that anything other than typical input doesn’t just dump the user out – that’s lazy programming.
