A “very big” Georgia airline passenger says he did everything right — buying two seats, calling the airline ahead of time, and warning gate agents — but still found himself repeatedly embarrassed at the airport when the extra seats he paid for were given away to standby passengers.
The traveler shared his experience in a Reddit post credited to user X-cessiveBandit, describing several Delta Air Lines flights, during which the extra seat he purchased for space was reassigned multiple times despite following the airline’s instructions.
According to his post, he flew two trips over about six weeks, totaling eight flights that involved connections through Atlanta. Half the flights were on standard narrow-body aircraft, and half were on smaller regional jets.
“I’m a very big guy (6’5” 400) and I know that I need extra space for flights,” he wrote. “So now I just buy two seats no matter who I fly with,” he wrote. “On all eight of my flights, my extra seat was given away.”
“I was really worried about it”
With that in mind, before his first trip, he said he called the airline to make sure he booked the extra seat correctly to avoid problems. He was told to book one ticket under his name and a second ticket under the same name with “EXST” (Extra Seat) as the middle name — a common airline procedure for booking an extra seat for personal comfort.
Despite doing that, he said the seat was repeatedly reassigned at the gate. “It got to the point where I would warn gate agents as soon as I got to the gate that I had an extra seat and that the extra seat had been given away before, and I was really worried about it because it’s so embarrassing,” he wrote.
He said the situation played out repeatedly: He boarded expecting the empty seat next to him, only to have a standby passenger show up assigned to the seat he had purchased. “And without fail, 30 minutes later, I would find myself looking up at someone standing in my row, telling me that they had the seat next to me that I had paid for,” he wrote.
Across the eight flights, he described several different outcomes. On one flight, he squeezed into the row with a standby passenger on a short regional flight. On another flight, flight attendants found other seats due to a missed connection.
Refund requests: “All rejected”
X-cessiveBandit went on to say that on two flights, he was seated beside a broken seat rather than the seat he had selected. On four flights, he said he had to tell standby passengers they could not take the seat because he had paid for it.
He said he later requested refunds, but they were rejected. “My refund requests have all been rejected, and Delta has pushed back significantly anytime I reached out to them about it,” he wrote.
Another Reddit user suggested filing a complaint with federal regulators, writing: “I’m so sorry. I ran into this same scenario when I was larger. My best advice for you is to file a complaint with the DOT since Delta isn’t being helpful,” suggesting the problem may not be isolated.
The commenter added, “The airline is the problem here. OP did everything right.”
Airlines, including Delta, do allow passengers to purchase extra seats for personal comfort. Those extra seats must be properly linked to the reservation, and airlines generally reserve the right to reassign seats for operational reasons, including accommodating standby passengers or aircraft changes. That can create situations where extra seats are mistakenly reassigned if the reservations are not correctly linked in the airline’s system.
The traveler said he completed his trips, but the experience left him anxious about flying again. “My traveling is done, I got to my destinations, but I was really embarrassed, and I’m dreading flying again,” he wrote.
The issue comes as Southwest Airlines recently changed its long-standing extra seat policy tied to its shift toward assigned seating, pushing some larger passengers to purchase extra seats outright, making situations like this more likely across the airline industry.
Published: Apr 1, 2026 05:35 pm