kaller

Typical of American Airlines gates in Austin with a herd of passengers blocking the entire concourse waiting to be called up.

dabeachman

no I didn't do it at the gate, I guess I did the $12.50, but that's $25 and it was wasted, they don't refund you if you still get shafted. I didn't even know about the at the gate option. But $80 to guarantee I sit next to the person I am travelling with? $1 is too much to ask to sit next to someone when you purchase the ....ing tickets together. And yes I reserved a middle seat for her one time when she was behind me and I was in business. Yes the FA yelled at me and told her to piss off. That is why I don't fly SW any longer.

antinseattle

Most people, IMO do it for 40$. Sit in aisle or window, save a middle seat, and everyone's okay with that. It becomes the "save more than 1, premium seat,exit row" that grinds most gears.....


You say "paying more than $1"....but IMO that argument holds no water. You chose to fly WN for whatever reason, and you knew what you were getting.....

I would send a nice letter, saying EB for $25 and B14 was unsatisfactory in your view, ask nicely to be refunded the 25$, grit your teeth and even throw WN a bone and mention something nice about WN at the end of the email. I would say, 4 out of 5 times, they would refund the 25$


Otherwise good for you. I don't fly Alaska unless I absolutely have too. Each their own....

toomanybooks

To get B14 with EBCI seems odd to me. Plus for there to be nothing but middles at that point means there must have a been a LOT of throughs.

BerenErchamion

Indeed, I don't know that I've ever been lower than A30 with EB.

I also tend to know my travel plans pretty far in advance, however.

nsx

B14 is possible with a mid-country flight that has a lot of people connecting onto it. Those people all get an earlier shot at boarding numbers with their EBCI (but not with manual checkin at T-24). It sounds like a perfect storm of many connecting passengers AND many through passengers.

I'm guessing this was a flight to or from DAL landing in an adjoining state. The huge through passenger counts are due to Wright Amendment restrictions which end in 6 months.

ElmhurstNick

If you fly enough to be A-list or A+, I don't get the whole confusion about not knowing where you're going to sit. I've been A+ since almost its inception, and since then I've sat in an aisle 100% of the time and 17D, 17C, 9D, or 9C probably 93-94% of those times. This includes on a ATL-MDW which had 84 thrus from Norfolk.... I like 17D because I generally get plenty of time to get situated, the rear RA rarely comes past my row unless (s)he is taking my drink order or dropping it off, and it's reasonably close to the rear lav. If the flight is oversold, I'll go for row 9 instead and get off the plane a little faster.

Orwaid

Hi-

So I thought I would try to summarize a little again.

1) EBCI ( the $12.50 kind) will usually get you two together, but no guarantee of that depending on the number of through passengers.

2) the A1-A15 ($40 kind) should get you the ability to get two together.

So, you want to save a little $$, you could try to buy one $40 slot and then try to save a middle seat behind the exit row. But if your SO is in the C group, that middle seat might still not be there.

So to maximize your chances and save a little money get one $40 and one $12.50. But be prepared to spend an extra $52.50 or be happy with what you get.

But what used to be a simple boarding process is now somewhat less so, especially for infrequent WN flyers. And probably worst for people like me who used to fly WN a lot and got used to the "take any open seat" mantra.

Finally, what happened to those 15-20 minute turns? Did all of the new boarding issues throw some kind of wrench onto that?

jatrain

OP: did you (or were you going to) move the teenager's bag from the seat?

Peter T.

In regards to seat saving, it's only really practical for a passenger to save the two seats adjacent to them, so two seats saved per passenger is the practical limit. Of course two pax can save four seats together (one set of seats on both sides of an aisle, as an example). But I've never seen a single passenger try to save more than two seats.

SANdyFlyer

The rookie mistake was trying to save 2 seats while sitting in the window. You can always shift over when the rest of your party arrives, but at least by sitting in the aisle, you are creating a physical barrier between the other 2 seats. Shame on the father for not explaining 'Seat Saving 101' principles to his teenage daughter.

Even though I don't agree with it, I frequently see the 'I'll put my tray table down and pretend to read' trick by aisle passengers to discourage others from taking the available middle on less than full flights. I doubt even OP would be brazen enough to straddle the teenager and try to hop over the tray table to get to the 'available' window seat.

Peter T.

Agreed.

At the very least, WN should just officially state their unwritten, but de facto, seat saving policy to avoid all confusion and ambiguity. They could state it like this:

“On Southwest passengers are allow to save up to two adjacent seats for fellow passengers traveling together. Saved seat are no longer considered to be available to other passengers boarding the flight.”

They could also state some exclusions (that would be very popular among their best customers) like "no seats in the exit rows can be saved though".

(Of course, that isn't the case now. But it would really be nice if WN adopted such a policy.)

But just be stating in writing the obvious, that WN allows passenger to save seats, would diffuse a lot of the anger and anxiety exhibited on this and other threads and more importantly, on board their planes.

nsx

I sure have. One person brings extra coats and drapes them over 6 seats. I've seen that twice, and for some reason the 6 seats always seem to be near the front of the plane.

I wish they had shown this on Airplane, where they managed to find plenty of behavior that I've never seen.

john398

LOL Airplane with Leslie Nielsen or do you mean Airline?

pinniped

Both Airplane and the sequel were fantastic. ^