My wife and dog flew from SLC to DAL this week. As a policy, our 40lb dog was too large to fit under the seat in front of us and so we followed policy which dictates we purchase a second seat for the dog.

On the LAS to DAL leg of the flight, the seat we had purchased for our furry family member ended up being on the other side of the aisle from my wife’s seat (which was a window - she was in seat C and the dog would have been 2 slots and an aisle away in seat A). There is a nice table top seat in between. The seat being that far away meant our dog slept in the floor in front of my wife on her side of the isle, which is not a problem. The issue we have is that we were forced to pay for a seat on the other side of the aisle that was never going to be able to be used. I will only speak for our dogs but we have never had one that would lay down on the other side of the aisle from us and stay over there. In a stressful situation like flying they will want to be by you.

In our opinion, this was a complete money grab for a seat we had no chance of using when there was plenty of space in front of our seat and the table top seat next to it. The customer service rep I spoke to informed me that if the dog wasn’t going to stay over there we could have stored an extra small carryon under that seat. Really, buy an extra seat for a pet on a semi-private airline and only be able to use it to store a purse?

We don’t mind paying for the extra seat. BUT, if you are going to force us to pay for that extra seat it needs to be adjoining the seat we are in, not on the other side of the aisle where it and the space in front of it will be unused. A fair solution would be to charge us some sort of up-charge for our dog to lay on the floor in front of us and sell the other seat to someone who is going to be able to use it. In this case I guess the up charge is the cost of another seat.