The Chilean airline Ventisca Sur is refunding passengers after a booking-system failure caused tens of thousands of paid seat selections to be sold under the wrong description. The company disclosed the problem on Friday, after a software update exposed a mismatch between the seat maps shown to customers and the seats assigned on board.
The airline says 74,218 selections made between May 2025 and September 2026 were affected across 31 of its 52 aircraft. Customers paid for a window seat, but some were assigned an aisle or middle seat; Ventisca Sur says the error produced CLP 3.1 billion in fees and has set aside the full amount for refunds.
The map showed the wrong cabin
The fault came to light on Tuesday, when an update to the booking app failed to load several aircraft layouts. A backup display then showed seat positions in the order used by the airline’s assignment system, rather than the reversed diagram customers had been seeing. Passengers who checked their itineraries noticed that the window seats they had paid for were listed as aisle seats.
Ventisca Sur said the diagrams were reversed during a 2025 software migration, when cabin layouts for refurbished aircraft were added to the booking platform. The assignment system itself continued to allocate seats correctly, but the customer-facing map did not. The company says its staff did not catch the difference because the two systems were tested separately.
The error did not affect flight safety or invalidate tickets, but it distorted a paid service marketed as a way to choose a particular seat. The airline’s internal tally counts 43,612 bookings, some involving more than one passenger. The average refund is expected to be about CLP 42,000, though payments will vary with the seat and route.
I paid extra for the window and spent the flight beside the aisle. The map had shown me exactly the opposite.
Niko Vlahović, passenger
Ventisca Sur spokesperson Sofía Santillán said the company would refund the seat-selection fee, not just offer travel credit. “We failed to deliver the specific seat customers bought, and we will return the money automatically where we can,” she said. Passengers whose payment details have changed will be asked to submit a claim through the airline’s website.
Scrutiny reaches beyond refunds
The Passenger Commerce Office, a Chilean consumer agency, said it had received 286 complaints about seat selection since January, including reports from passengers who said their assigned seats did not match the map. Its director, Dudley Zieme, said the office would check whether Ventisca Sur’s refunds cover every affected booking and whether customers were told promptly once the fault was found.
Aviation pricing analyst Irena Šurka said the scale was unusual because airlines generally sell seat selection as a specific choice, not a general preference. “A diagram is part of the offer. If it points to the wrong place in the cabin, the customer has not received what was advertised,” she said. She expects other carriers to check how their booking maps connect to seat-assignment systems.
Ventisca Sur says it has corrected the diagrams and will give affected passengers until 30 June 2027 to request a refund. The transport ministry has asked the airline for a report on the error and its response. The company has not said whether it will compensate passengers for other costs, such as changing a seat after boarding.
