Delta and United Sued Over Window Seats Without Windows

In August, consumers filed two class action lawsuits — one against Delta and the other against United Airlines — for charging premium prices for window seats that did not have windows adjacent to them.

In the complaint against Delta, the consumer’s lawyer contends:

For many years Delta has knowingly and routinely sold windowless window seats to travelers. For instance various models of Delta’s Boeing 737 Boeing 757 and Airbus A321 aircraft are built with one or more seats that would traditionally have window but do not include one due to the placement of air conditioning ducts electrical conduits or other interior components. Delta operates hundreds of these planes which each make multiple flights every day. As result Delta has likely sold over million windowless window seats throughout the class period.

This poor consumer who brought the case, the complaint says, spent four-and-a-half hours on his flight from Atlanta to Orange County, California seated against a blank wall.

Apparently other airlines like American and Alaska that sell windowless window seats provide a warning during the reservation process disclosing that those seats have no actual window.

*MOUSE PRINT:

In the United Airlines case, lawyers for the airline are asking that the case be dismissed, arguing that “window” refers to the position of the seat and not any potential view from that seat, saying in part:

“The use of the word ‘window’ in reference to a particular seat cannot reasonably be interpreted as a promise that the seat will have an exterior window view.

Rather, the word ‘window’ identifies the position of the seat — i.e., next to the wall of the main body of the aircraft.”

United’s lawyers also made a very clever argument when they asserted that the airline’s contract of carriage — the formal agreement between the airline and passengers — “does not contain any promise that seats in the window position of any aircraft will have exterior window views.”

*MOUSE PRINT:

We scoured their contract of carriage and in fact there is no disclosure at all in reference to window seats having or not having a view. There is also nothing in the contract of carriage that guarantees you won’t be sucked into the airplane’s toilet and be ejected from the plane somewhere over Kansas!

Safe travels. Happy Thanksgiving to all our loyal readers.

P.S. You can visit Aero Lopa to see window placements and seat maps for most major airplanes and carriers.