Kevin AA

It's about time. Flying a plane with 1/3 of the seats empty is uneconomical. It also means you're still less than 6 feet away from someone else. The only way to please the scaredy cats is to spend even more time boarding and deplaning, 12 feet between passengers, and 5/6th (83%) empty, not 1/3 -- window, empty row, aisle, empty row, window, empty row, aisle, empty row, etc.

The studies showed that coronavirus transmission on a plane is incredibly unlikely. If you're that scared and you choose to drive instead, your risk of death or injury go way, way up because of the vastly higher crash risk in a car.

m907

These are the same people who will wear a mask but then go to the bathroom without washing their hands. There's no facts behind it, just fear and/or virtue signaling.

pitflyer

So if your flight 'looks full' Southwest tells you three days in advance... I assume changing to another flight is based on typical Southwest rules (ie fares are higher closer to takeoff) but no special change rules like when the schedule changes and let's you change to any flight in a 30 day window?

azepine00

With us entry requiring tests and overall number of infections at all time high the chances of ending up close to someone infected on domestic route especially to warmer destination is more significant now. Don't want to end up shoulder to shoulder with some passive aggressive non-believer who will pretend to gnaw on pack of pretzels without mask for the duration of flight.

Booked AS in december and DL this quarter - gonna take advantage of empty middles as long as possible under the circumstances. There are no guarantees but those measures add up. YMMV.

synergistic

I just want to be able to pay for an extra seat =(

pitflyer

Just gain a couple of hundred pounds and become a customer of size Joking aside, since Southwest already had the abilities in place to do this for COS, don't know why they don't offer that for everyone.

synergistic

Lol, my other half is a big guy, but not quite that big. I've legit thought about having him give it a go but I'd much rather just buy a darned extra seat.

LegalTender

With open seating, administration, fulfillment and execution of "extra seat" requests could be disputable. FAs don't need the transactional trauma.

jmastron

I think the problem is that with open seating, you have to let anyone who's purchasing an extra seat preboard, otherwise by the time they get on there might not be 2 seats available. And the more people that preboard the less people will be willing to pay/show loyalty for A-list, EarlyBird, etc.

Plus I believe Southwest actually refunds COS extra seats after travel even if the plane was otherwise full; that might create some complications sorting out different types of extra-seats after the fact.

But yes, right now for those of us who would only fly if not cheek to cheek with another person, other airlines are a better choice (DL with "free" middle for now, UA/AA/others allow anyone to buy an extra seat). And yes, I know 2 feet isn't 6 feet, but it's also not 6 inches.

flyerUSA

Ouch, somebody takes this forum too seriously. Though certainly not for the first time. Mwah, @toomanybooks.

Thanks again to those of you who helped me avoid other human beings. Turns out my flight was very empty and just about everyone scored their own row. Not a bad ending.

I found safety to be quite lax compared to Delta. I brought my own Purell wipes and scrubbed the row. And, the somewhat...snarky? aggressive? frustrated? exasperated? mask announcements from gate and flight folks seemed to imply that Southwest has frequent problems with mask refusers but my trip was without incident. I enjoyed the sealed snack mix bag, and declined the unprotected cup of free-poured "ice water", and lived to tell about it.

Enjoy your travels, Southwest flyers!

spongenotbob

Thank goodness no human rights atrocity occurred. Are you sure you’re OK?

flyerUSA

I wasn't going to mention it, but since you asked. I got the right-hand row 5 to myself, and as the rest of the passengers boarded...at least one and perhaps several of them gassed me on their way to further rows.

I suppose, in a begrudging nod to the mask refusers – the (dare I say, atrocious) odor had no trouble permeating my face covering and quickly made its way into my nose.