flyer4512

1. We don't save seats

2. Doubtful that you would say a word to me, I am a COS with about 10% body fat off season. But if you did say something I would probably move to the middle and use COS seat for the Aisle or window and let you sit right next to me, lol

3. If Sw is so bad why are you on this forum ?

justhere

End of A is "high A", A1 being the lowest number you can get. And you said that three times she was high A. All A's, whether high, low, or otherwise, board before family boarding, so that's why I said it didn't make sense that you were told that you could both board at family boarding when you both had boarding numbers that allowed you to board before family boarding.

I don't remember the exact number but there's close to 50 window and 50 aisle seats at minimum on WN planes. Boarding at A60 means that there are at most 59 people, plus preboards, plus throughs, that would board before the highest of A's. And one of those would be you. So the odds of you not finding a window or aisle with an empty middle if you board at your position are pretty slim at best. Certainly not a guarantee but it would work far more often than "sometimes".

dinanm3atl

High number... sorry. IE A60.

And that's the rub. Being told boarding in wrong zone yet she won't be taking anyone's seat of consequence. My wife is in my party. So is my 3yr old and 4 month old. If I earned status I want to board when it is my turn and take my family with me. I am not sure why this is such an odd/weird/not a thing on WN.

toomanybooks

Thems the rules. Fly another airline.

justhere

Ok now it makes sense. You didn't mention the kids. So Family Boarding would be when they could board if they didn't all have A's. But even then you shouldn't have an issue getting seats together.

You can't really have open seating and allow people to board out of order.

Kevin AA

Boarding early because you have status and bringing your entire non-status family with you is no big deal on the other airlines because they all have assigned seats. The only thing the rest of the passengers could possibly lose is a bit of overhead bin space.

On Southwest, you must have status yourself in order to get a low A position for free. Whether you bring one, two, or five other people on the plane with you is irrelevant. Non-status passengers don't get to jump the line, and the reason is because of open seating.

20 years ago, you could buy a discount fare and be one of the first people to board the plane if you got to the gate really early and stood in line waiting for the gate agent to show up. Now, you have to buy a Business $elect ticket, pay for an A position at the gate, or buy EBCI. Buying a discount fare and checking in for free puts you at least 60 people further back. Letting friends and family members of one A-lister to board early just makes this worse.

Kevin AA

She must have gotten a boarding position that someone else had abandoned (i.e., someone else checked in with B-30, possibly even with EBCI, and then changed flights).

nsx

You don't. You do have to check in at T-24.

On other airlines you often can only pre-select middle seats without paying extra. At the airport they will assign you seats together if they have them. That's not materially different from Southwest and in fact it probably produces lower probability of success.

kb9522

1. I didn't say you did. I said if you did. It might not have been clear in my response, but I did understand you buy EBCI for everyone in your group.

2. Am I supposed to be threatened by someone's appearance? I have no problem saying something to anyone.

3. It was in the trending topics.

rsteinmetz70112

I doubt that.

When I was flying Airtran I could actually watch the plane fill up as seats were assigned at check-in. Very many people waited until right before the flight to check in. You could literally watch the seat map web page fill up sometimes between the time I got to the airport when I got to the gate. You could even mostly tell who had bought the ticket on Southwest. I have done similar but more limited tests with Frontier. There is no way to test on Southwest except voiding an existing boarding pass and printing a new one. I may try that someday on a flight I'm going to cancel if I'm bored enough to repeatedly cancel the BP and get another one issued, but I doubt the behavior of passengers varies much, especially those inexperienced passengers who don't obsess on FT?

In another incident I had A-17 on a light load. The guy who had A-16 had never flown Southwest before and checked in a couple of hours before the flight. He was completely clueless. Other than that he seemed to be a young man of reasonable intelligence and we had a nice conversation while waiting for boarding to start.

COS_Flyer

I usually travel alone for business, and my kids are in their 20's now, so I haven't had this problem. But I expect that you will find open seats together toward the back.

Failing that, you might just take some $10 bills with you on the flight. When you get to an open seat, offer the person in the seat next to it $10 to change to another seat in a different row. If that person declines, go to the next open seat, and make the same offer to the person sitting next to it. If you don't get any takers at $10, go back to the last person and offer them $15. Using this approach, you can probably get 5 seats together.

LegalTender

Even this well-choreographed cabaret act might delay the flight.

COS_Flyer

I thought it was a fairly obvious solution, but I have never observed it. Are you aware of any WN prohibition of the practice? I can't really see that it would cause a noticeable delay in departing. I mean all the pax have to sit somewhere.

kb9522

You can't see how systematically going down the cabin and attempting to bribe people, then swimming upstream and starting all over again when nobody accepts versus just sitting down in an open seat might cause a delay in boarding? Really?

COS_Flyer

Boy, sounds like I touched a nerve. Easy there.

I would not think the word "bribe" would apply to a voluntary transaction between two passengers. And to be fair, I did not suggest going from the rear of the plane back to the front of the plane to begin the process over, just increasing the amount offered from where ever you got your last "no thanks." If the FAs "call time", of course you just take the nearest seat. But I think I've recalled later boarding passengers and FAs asking for people to move seats to accommodate a family. I was just suggesting that offering some $ might get more volunteers. The pax are flying WN, after all, not Emirates Air.