Originally Posted by
Peoriaman1
I sometimes get the late boarder who is faced with nothing but available middle seats, and invariably they want me to move to accomodate their spouse/partner/friend/co-worker (and thus give up my window seat) so that they can sit together. My answer is always No if it involves me moving to a middle seat anywhere else on the plane. Ain't happening, sorry, no. One small advantage of open seating is that this situation is much less prevalent on Southwest than it is elsewhere, because on the other airlines, the seat-swapper-wannabe already has a connection to said middle seat; the spouse/partner/friend/co-worker is assigned to some other middle seat elsewhere. Sorry; not my problem if you booked late and all that were left were middles.
I find swap requests more common on WN
because of the terrible "open seating" system. Nobody has a BP with a seat on it, nobody has paid more for THAT seat (even if they paid more to board early). The only claim you can make is "I boarded before you..if you want to sit next to your companion..get an A pass next time". I find it the height of cheek to board with the C's find only middles left, and demand someone in an aisle or window who boarded way earlier move just because they are alone. This also exacerbates the "seat saving" problem on WN.
Nobody NEEDS to sit with their companion if they don't have special needs..and if they do, get a pre-board.
I always say no.