SNCF: you have 15 minutes to find your seat, otherwise it will be reassigned

After spending thirty minutes at the train bar sipping coffee, you may no longer have a seat when you return. This is, in theory, the rule newly included in the general terms and conditions of sale (GTC) of SNCF Voyageurs, as spotted by the consumer association UFC-Que choisir. It stipulates that if a seat remains vacant fifteen minutes after the departure of a TGV or Intercités, a ticket inspector may assign it to a passenger who does not have a seat.

“Failure to claim a reserved seat within fifteen minutes of the train’s departure from the station indicated on the ticket may result in the loss of the reserved seat reservation and, more generally, of any seat,” it is stated.

“It’s anecdotal”

“There is nothing new, no change in the rules,” they say at the SNCF. The practice has always been the same and has not changed: the train managers are used to repositioning passengers without a seat on a seat that is not occupied after the train has departed, to allow passengers to travel in the best possible conditions.” Olivier, a train manager for over twenty years, confirms that management has not issued any specific instructions. “It’s completely anecdotal,” he says. “We’re not going to put a passenger who spends twenty minutes at the bar of a TGV in a difficult situation. It would be a direct clash.”

“It can happen in a square, for example, that a person takes two places and the second never arrives,” he reports. “In this case, obviously we will allow a user, standing, to sit in the vacant place if we are in a situation of overcrowding.”