air-travel
Selling a seat on a commerical arline flight
<p>Suppose I am on a commercial airline flight. People are boarding. I am seated. A person comes up to me and asks &quot;Would you mind changing seats with me so that I can sit next to my spouse?&quot;. I reply that I will change seats with her for $100 cash. She's gives me the cash. We trade seats.</p>
<p>Is this legal?</p>

<p>You can look up the contract of carriage for the flight-type (e.g. domestic or international) and airline, here is <a href="https://www.delta.com/content/dam/delta-www/pdfs/dl-dgr-master-04mar22.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">one sample</a>. That contract does not address the question. Nothing in the contract says &quot;you must sit in the seat that you were assigned&quot;, and nothing expressly forbid seat-swapping (for consideration or otherwise). It is therefore reasonable to assume that seat-swapping is allowed, and it is unlikely that an airline would care (leaving aside Putt-Putt Air which runs tiny little planes with careful weight-balancing).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46504" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Assaulting a crew member</a> is a crime, and under a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46318" rel="nofollow noreferrer">separate law</a>, it can result in a civil penalty, which extends to &quot;any action that poses an imminent threat to the safety of the aircraft or other individuals on the aircraft&quot;. This translates into certain regulations such as <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F/part-91" rel="nofollow noreferrer">14 CFR 91.11</a>, which says that &quot;No person may assault, threaten, intimidate, or interfere with a crewmember in the performance of the crewmember's duties aboard an aircraft being operated&quot;.</p>
<p>There is no actual law that says you must comply with crew member instructions. Failure to comply <em>might</em> be interfering with crew member's duties, but isn't so automatically. There are also specific enforceable regulations regarding smoking and seat belts in <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-G/part-121" rel="nofollow noreferrer">14 CFR 121.317</a>.</p>
<p>So there is nothing illegal about voluntary seat-swapping, whether for free or for money. There is some risk that an airline would decide that crew members have a duty to prevent seat-swapping, and
the FAA will probably support the airline's decision at least w.r.t. civil penalties.</p>
