Orwaid

Actually, yes, my mother is quite proud of me. Although she right now is suffering from dementia and I am her primary caregiver, so you will have to take my word for it.

One of things she taught me is to be kind to people, but do not put up with people that try to abuse a system for their own personal gain at the expense of others.

And yes, I am not afraid to call people out, regardless of who they are.

Which explains why I work for myself, lol.

saneman

This is why WN should tell families. You want to sit together - all of you buy early boarding, or none of you do. Give family discounts to avoid this crap - each additional family member pays 50% of the early boarding fee to avoid people trying to get early boarding freebies with the seat saving. When in doubt , the better number boards with the worse number. And this is why you need to have an explicit seat saving policy because even on this board, there are so many opinions. About the only consensus reached is that it's no big deal to save a middle seat. The rest is up for grabs.

Or you can have it easy and go with assigned seating available in almost every other major airline in the world.

InkUnderNails

I have to add this. I did not want to do it but there were 66 through passengers. That is an emergency for me. I preboard and have to have the A window seat. (Long explanation if anyone is interested).

I did the unthinkable. I asked someone in the aisle seat about Row 5 or 6 if the other two seats were taken. They reluctantly said "No" but I could feel the trepidation in their voice. I settled in the window, plopped my Seat Reserved document in the middle and waited.

After a few minutes on the completely full flight someone asked about the middle. I said "Sorry, it's reserved."

The person in the aisle asked who it was for. "Oh, its mine. Nobody is coming. They let fat people do that."

A few minutes pass. "Uh, you mean that seat will be open even after everyone boards?" "Yep." And the thing that always happens when they learn. It is almost imperceptible. They relax a bit, hang their arm over the armrest into the middle seat space and try to spread out a bit. Then they smile.

hiima

You sound like a brilliant yet terrible person.

Wingrider

LAS->SJC a couple weeks ago- I am A6 or A8 (can't recall) and park myself in an isle seat at row 6. As the rest of the PAX board I notice a couple split the row in front of me (isle to isle #5) and the woman on the right side throws a jacket across the 3 seats in front of her. They proceed to tell boarding PAX their row 5 seats are "taken" and when someone asks about all of right side row 4 ("D, E, F") she pipes up and says they're taken. That puts the total saved to 7.

At some point the line boarding backs up as people are filling bins and jockeying for seats. One PAX has been watching this as he slowly worked his way into the plane and after throwing his bag in the bin, slides past the jacket "saving" D E F in 4 and grabs the window. The woman tried to say all of the seats were taken but the guy said " well I just thought the first 2 seats were taken so I'm now in this one- that a *problem* ?"

His taking that window seat so flustered the woman she snatched her jacket and abandoned the saving efforts of row 4 and the remaining 2 seats quickly filled. I was distracted but know they also lost one of the left seats the husband was saving. I don't know how the other row 5 seats were decided.

The PAX she was saving row 4 seats for must have been in group C as they were some of the last to board the full flight. She gave them a sigh and said "sorry I tried" and off they went to the back of the plane.

nsx

The next time I see somebody saving a large block of seats near the front I will volunteer the observation that this tactic has a much greater chance of success if attempted in the neighborhood of row 15. I doubt that anyone inexperienced enough to try this will believe me, but after saving row 5 fails they may remember my recommendation for the next time.

smmrfld

Do you wish to explain and/or apologize for this moronic comment before massive amounts of scorn are heaped upon you? Hint: get to know the tenor of - and frequent contributors in - a forum before posting.

antinseattle

+1. I'd be interested to know what this person was trying to get at? Ink has to be one of the most well respected people in WNs forum and FT overall. I've learned a ton, so have many. I would like to hear more, or explain, hiima?

InkUnderNails

Thanks!

There are times when I am happy to be half right about something. In fact, for those things of which I am mostly ignorant, in the long term half right is pretty much the best I can expect.

GottaLuvCruising

Huh? Is there something about the explanation that you don't understand.

FYI - I do the "happy dance" when I can snag the remaining seat in a COS trio!

rsteinmetz70112

Great idea. I'm gonna have to start looking for them.

I still find most CoS don't actually take advantage of this policy. Seems like I see someone one every flight who would seem to qualify.

Tanic

Summer is back. So far this week, I've been on three airplanes in which entire rows have been saved. The common denominator is that the saver has either medically pre-boarded, or bought one of the A1-15 BPs.

Two of the flights had a lone child on one side of the aisle with the adult blocking the other side. Carry ons were placed on the vacant seats.

Yesterday's flight had an aggressive seat saver who sat in the middle of one row near the front of the cabin and pulled down all the tray tables in two rows hogging up aisle and window seats. He was telling A-Listers who want the seats to move along. At least two pax complained to the FA. Unfortunately with WNs non-policy, she could do nothing. Even C group spinners were kept out of the rows until his entourage arrived with the last C BPs.

nsx

I'm a little puzzled why Southwest does not encourage FA's to support honest customers over multiple seat savers. The latter are stealing from Southwest, which ultimately affects employee compensation. On the other hand, I'm also puzzled why Southwest backs off when confronted with a publicity seeker who has set them up with a media-friendly but false story.

rsteinmetz70112

I would have been tempted to raise one of the tray tables and sit down. Assuming the passenger was as aggressive as you say the resulting incident could have gotten him ejected from the flight.

pinniped

As I often post in these threads, I don't understand why Southwest doesn't publish a concise policy about seat saving.

It really could be simple. 1 pax is permitted to occupy a seat and save an adjacent middle beyond the exit row. That's it.

I also wouldn't mind a "no saving ever" rule, but the back-middles are a reasonable concession, I suppose.