The dark patterns of seat selection in Turkish Airlines

Ticket prices gone wrong

It started in mid-spring when we were checking ticket prices for Helsinki-Baku flights. The figures were crazy, to say the least. Since we were also planning a summer trip to Estonia, we decided to check the price from Tallinn. Bingo! Twice as cheap. There are roughly 100 km between Tallinn and Helsinki (Vantaa) airports. The distance doesn’t justify it. Helsinki airport tariffs are certainly higher than Tallinn’s, but not that much! So, the good old supply and demand: if Turkish Airlines can sell the tickets for that price, why go lower? It’s summer season after all, and Finns are rushing to warm countries.

This ticket price talk is rather a rant. After all, the route is not monopolized; one can fly, for example, Air Baltic when on a strict budget. However, I wanted to emphasize that the tickets are not cheap, and considering all the services included, the dark patterns are not something you would expect.

Seat selection gets weird

For years, we had a default seat arrangement where either all of us sat together, or (after our youngest daughter was born) 3 + 1, making it possible for both kids to sit with either mom or dad.

But on the flight from Tallinn to Istanbul (our first leg), the seats were split as 2 + 2. This was on an Airbus 321 (or Boeing 737, I can’t remember exactly) where economy class has a 3 + 3 seat configuration.

Well, the kids have grown up enough to sit alone with either parent, so it’s truly not a big deal, right? But that was the first subconscious bell - have Turkish Airlines updated their algorithms?

Seat selection gets worse

Two days before going back to Finland, we got an email:

The all-caps subject is certainly emphasizing. What's inside?

Dear ZAUR NASIBOV

Your seat selection on the 10 AUGUST TK0339 Baku (GYD) -Istanbul,Istanbul (IST) has been changed to 11F due to operational reasons.

For details and seat transactions to your *** reservation, you may visit our MOBILE app / WEBSITE Air.tk/manage-booking.

Thank you for your undestanding.

Who said that I am undestanding? Because I was not understanding, neither I did want to. Upon checking the seats I saw this:

What the... Has someone reserved both D and E seats in row 10 or 11? Perhaps all the seat pairs and triplets are taken, and there is no way to accommodate us closer to each other? Let's check the rows at the tail:

So many unreserved seats! Yet, instead of keeping us together ten rows further to the tail, the algorithm decides to split us in the most annoying way.

Support can't do anything

I had some hope that support might help with the problem. Although caring, the operator could do nothing, since the seat reservations were not paid for - they were "randomly assigned". According to the operator, I could either pay for the desired seats or... request better seats while checking in at the airport.

Frequent fliers know too well that nowadays the chances of ending up at the very tail of a plane are increasingly high when checking in at the airport. Usually, passengers check in via airline apps hours before the flight to secure their seats. And just few years ago, selecting seats while checking in was free of charge, at least with Turkish airlines. Not anymore.

Five stages of grief

Twenty four hours before the flight, I am awake early to check in via the app. Sure, you can pick the seat! Only 14 Euros per passenger!

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - all happening within a blink of an eye. It is not about the money; 14 Euros is what lunch costs in Finland. It was really a question of principle. First, they spread people from a group (read: family members) across the rows, and now they make us pay to get back together. And you know what? That’s ingenious! Because I paid that money so that we don’t end up scattered even more or at the last rows in the tail. Bravo, Turkish Airlines, you’ve discovered a dark well of gold!

Bad luck?

Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps it’s just bad luck. On the second leg of the journey, our seats were on the same row: B, C, D, E. Imagine my surprise when the neighboring passengers from seats A and F asked to change places because they were a mother and daughter flying together! (Note: This is a crafted screenshot; I didn’t take a screenshot of these seats back then).

Aftermath

Will I stop flying Turkish Airlines? Let’s see what next year brings :) As a passenger, I despise dark patterns like this and would rather pay extra from the start to have a pleasant experience, instead of getting “YOUR SEAT HAS BEEN CHANGED!11!!!11” emails.