SNCF becomes uncompromising: you now have 15 minutes maximum to sit in your seat before it is reallocated

The SNCF will include a new rule in its general terms and conditions of sale. The policy applied by the controllers does not change in practice.

Thirty minutes at the bar drinking coffee or twenty minutes looking for available toilets, you may no longer have any seats when you return. This is the new rule written into the general terms and conditions of sale (GTC) of SNCF Voyageurs, reports UFC-Que choisir.

It stipulates that if a seat remains vacant fifteen minutes after the departure of a TGV or Intercités, a controller may assign it to a passenger who does not have a seat.

“Failure to claim a reserved seat within fifteen minutes of the train leaving 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.

“Nothing new”

“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 in the habit of relocating passengers without a seat to a seat that would not be occupied after the train has departed, to allow passengers to travel in the best possible conditions", explains Olivier, the train manager for 20 years, quoted by Le Parisien, confirming that management has not given any specific instructions.

It would be only a "tiny portion of people", according to the latter, to leave their empty seat without belongings as soon as you board the train. Some passengers reserve two or three seats to have more comfort. This rule can therefore be useful in this case.

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