In August 2025, two nearly identical lawsuits were filed: one against United (in San Francisco federal court) and one against Delta Air Lines (in Brooklyn federal court). They claim that each airline sold more than one million “window seats” on aircraft such as the Boeing 737, Boeing 757, and Airbus A321, many of which are next to blank fuselage walls rather than windows.
Passengers say they paid seat-selection fees (commonly $30 to $100+) expecting a view, sunlight, or the comfort of a genuine window seat — and say they would not have booked or paid extra had they known the seat lacked a window.
As reported by Reuters, United’s filing argues that it never promised a view when it used the label “window” for a seat. According to the airline, “window” refers only to the seat’s location next to the aircraft wall, not a guarantee of an exterior view.
It’s easy to take the pedantic side and decry this as a foolish ruling but I counter that anyone that’s been on a flight knows that not every “window” seat has a window. It’s unfortunate that the common parlance doesn’t match reality but that’s how it is 🤷♂️
I would argue the other way. Not all airplanes have this, and unless you fly a lot you may not come across it, and if you do happen to notice, there’s no reason to immediately assume that they would necessarily call them window seats. Lots of industries have ‘common parlance’ that many of their customers may not run into until it causes an issue, and blaming the confusion on the customer is unfair.
If anything, they should lose the case and be forced to modify their terminology to something like ‘window side’ seating or something. I mean you could easily argue that a ‘window’ seat doesn’t necessarily give you a great view because it’s over the wing or something, but to call it a window seat when it has no window is close to calling a hotel room a ‘queen bed room’ and then getting there and there’s no bed, and claiming it’s the same size as a room they would normally put a queen bed in. I mean what are you paying extra for if you pick a fake window seat? Maybe not having someone to the wall side of you, but at bare minimum they should be liable for charging extra while neglecting to mention it’s a window seat with no window.
If nothing else, if you think a ‘window seat with no window’ seems like an odd phrase, and not an obvious thing sometime should say, then it’s not being pedantic to call this out.
And it’s almost pathetic that the way to solve this is through legislation.