Two days ago on a SouthWest flight from Houston to Fort Lauderdale. I purchased the Wanna Get Away flight and was concerned about my wife and I might not be able to sit together if I get a boarding group C.
Therefore, I paid the extra fee with the Early Bird check-in to get a better position for boarding. I felt this was worth the extra money to guarantee we could sit together.
My wife and I were assigned A47 and A48 at the boarding line. There are 3 groups A, B, C. We were in great shape.
Stepping on to the plane we passed by the Flight Attendant who was greeting people entering.
We stared making our way down the aisle and I saw that there were a number of seats with the window and center seat available right up front.
I then started asking the people in the aisle seat if I could get by. Iit took me asking 6 people until I could finally get accepted in to a seat. All of the passengers on the aisles said that the seats were taken.
On SouthWest there is no seat saving. I did not want to get in to a fight so I moved on. Especially after seeing all of the stories about airlines kicking off passengers. I just did not want this to get me in trouble.
We finally got in to a seat at wing level.
I was fuming about what just had happened. I paid extra for two people to board early for any available seat.
The SouthWest system sucks. The Flight Attendant who was greeting was completely oblivious to what was going on. Even when the lines were backing up. The Flight Attendant did not turn her head to see if there was a problem.
I just sat in my seat watching the people boarding going through what I had just gone through. “Sorry this seat is taken, Sorry this seat is taken”.
As more and more passengers went came by, those ‘saved seats’ eventually were filled up by passengers who were the friends of the savers.
The only available saved seats were the one’s directly in front of me. The women saver was sitting in the aisle seat. She was saving the window seat for someone.
Finally a black man, about 27 years old stopped and asked if he could get by the woman blocking the row. She said, “Not the window, but you can sit in the middle.” He looked at her and said, “You can’t save seats on SouthWest.” She said, “You can’t sit at the window.” He said he could and tried to step past her. She raised he legs up and and said, “No you can not.”
She was fighting him. After more arguing she said, “Only the middle seat.” The line behind him was building and passengers started to get frustrated. I could see the flight attendant up front. She was chatting it up with a passenger oblivious to the whole scene going down in front of me.
The man finally said, “Ok middle seat only.” The woman put her feet down and he stepped by. He proceeded to slip in to the window seat.
The women then said, “You know you are a real asshole.” She was aggressive and kept repeating that line. The male just ignored her.
That woman was aggressive and threatening and the guy in front of me just tried to block her out.
Finally at the end, with only one or two passengers left, the woman’s female partner arrived and she immediately cranked up her friend by saying things such as,”This asshole took your spot.” Now both women verbally attacked the man. He just kept his cool and did not go for the bait.
The new passenger said down in the middle seat and put her arm on the arm rest and stuck her elbow a few inches in to the seat of the man. The man said,”You can’t put your arm in my seat.” This woman was super aggressive, “Watch me!”
I was sure we were going to have the police on board at some point.
The man ended up sliding his arm under hers and putting his arm on the armrest. The women slammed her elbow on to his pushing down. He just pretended like it didn’t hurt.
After a few minutes the women moved her arm and just started talking to her partner still complaining about the man.
Other than some more rude comments, the women ended up ignoring the man and the rest of the flight was problem free.
My takeaway:
- People are breaking the rules and taking advantage of the SouthWest system.
- These women were rude and aggressive for no reason other than they did not get their way. The man did everything right. He stood his ground and did not get baited. If he would have, I could have seen him getting thrown off the plane.
- The Flight Attendant did not see what was going on. It looked like she was feigning ignorance by not keeping an eye on these pre-loading backups and load arguing from these women verbally attacking that man.
- I will try to stay away from booking an airline that doesn’t give me an assigned seat. I do not trust this system.