by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 3:25 PM ET, Thu August 21, 2025
As any traveler with children can attest, getting the window seat on a plane is important.
The opportunity to look out the plane window is a giant part of the experience for young travelers, and thus, plenty of families pay extra when booking airline tickets to ensure this happens.
Of course, it’s not just families who care about this. Plenty of other travelers do, as well.
But it seems that on some airlines, even when you pay extra to secure that window seat, you may not be getting what you thought you would.
Delta Air Lines and United Airlines passengers have filed a lawsuit claiming they were charged extra for the privilege of being able to select window seats. Only to find out upon boarding their flights, that there was no window at all in their reserved seat location.
United Airlines airplane in flight. (Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/hectorchristiaen)
The proposed class action against United Airlines has been filed in San Francisco federal court, while the similar suit against Delta has been filed in Brooklyn, New York. In both cases, the plaintiffs are pursuing million of dollars in damages, according to USA Today.
In particular, the complaints allege that on some Boeing 737, Boeing 757 and Airbus A321 planes, there are some seats that should contain windows but do not. This is due to the location of various obstructions such as air conditioning ducts, or perhaps electrical conduits or various other such components. Other plane models have these issues as well.
The problem however, is that neither United, nor Delta identify the seats lacking windows during the ticket booking and purchase. By comparison, carriers such as Alaskas and American do make this reality clear when travelers are buying their tickets.
Making matters worse, the carriers that are the focus of the lawsuits still charge passengers extra for the windowless seats, sometimes hundreds of dollars more.
Both lawsuits point out what should be fairly obvious to all of us, including the airlines: ”Had plaintiffs and the class members known that the seats they were purchasing (were) windowless, they would not have selected them – much less have paid extra,”
Neither carrier has yet commented on the matter, per Reuters.
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