Multiple Seats, One Passenger

My best friend is moving to Hong Kong on Friday, and he told me that when he flew over a couple of weeks ago he saw a dispute between some passengers over an apparently empty seat.

The Continental 777 that does the nonstop EWR-HKG is configured 3-3-3 in economy. What happened was a passenger wanted to change seats and so sat down in an apparently empty seat, only to be informed by the person sitting one or two seats over that he had bought for himself all 3 seats in that unit. A flight attendant was summoned to check the man's ticket and he had indeed done so, so the other person was officially told to move.

My friend asked the FA about this and she told him that on the Hong Kong flights it was very common for one person to buy a block of 3 economy seats together, presumably because it provides some extra room to sleep or stretch out on this 15 hour flight for much less than the price of one business class ticket.

Does anyone know of any other sectors where this is a common practice, and if any airlines either actively market this or discourage people from doing it?

wow, what was that price tag? when i came back from poland in october i got the second to last center row in economy. then again, i was nonreving and i once again worked some magic to get that. the baording agents did me the favor and made sure that there was no one sitting next to me so i was able to stretch out and sleep!

especially when i nonrev and the flights aren't full to capacity if i spot an empty row, especially if it's the last row i'll wait till boarding is over and there are no more pax coming off the jetway i'll quickly hop over and claim that row as mine. if i'm sitting with two other pax and i see two seats empty next to someone i'll do the same, after making sure with the person there i won't be interfering with anyone else. ah... the joys of flying for free!

As to the math, well, plugging in some sample dates in mid January for EWR-HKG-EWR on Continental.com, the round trip economy fare is about $1200 so for 3 seats that would cost roughly $3600. The same flights in BusinessFirst would be around $7100 so as you can see, buying your own set of 3 economy seats gets you extra space for almost half the premium cabin fare. Of course, you don't get the lounge access and the yummy premium food, but I guess you're entitled to 3 economy meals since you did pay for them.

I do wonder how one makes such a 3 seat for 1 passenger booking in as much as I don't think the website can functionally accomodate this, anyone know how it's done?

I have often wondered how many coach seats it would take to add up to a Business class seat price.

Could someone, perhaps on the operations end of things, comment on how that would be done? My guess is that it would have to be a phone reservation.

But also, would buying those 3 seats put you in a better position for upgrades and bumps? I mean, you buy 3 seats, pay $3600 but the airline needs 3 seats. Maybe it's a win win if you give up your 3 seats and they upgrade you to Business Anyway and you saved 3K.

How can you book 3 seats? Also, I think I know the answer here but you would not accrue triple miles for each segment even though you bought 3 tickets, would you?

Wonder what the folks at Flyertalk would advise.

My friend said that with respect to the HKG routes, many of the tickets are bought through specialized travel agencies that cater to this market (either in HKG or, on this end, Chinatown, Flushing etc.) and the agencies can book the 3 seats for you. Not sure how one would do it directly with the airline, via web or phone.