Well SW does not actually say you are allowed to save seats either. It would be interesting to know what would happen if the woman really pressed her point and got the FA involved. |
Assuming there were any other seats left on the plane, nothing. |
It's also not against the rules to just sit in the seat that's open. Nobody is going to intervene and protect the "saved" seat. |
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keep running into this problem as many people have reported. On a recent flight Sacramento to Seattle, two different seats I wanted to sit in were "saved", so I just stopped asking and I went to the back in frustration where there were open rows and no one obviously saving seats. After the flight, I discussed the non policy in detail with a Southwest staff member. Here is what I found out. In normal circumstances, while the flight attendants will not stop people from trying to save seats, they will also not make you move if you sit in a seat someone has "saved". So here is what you can do:
Ignore the person trying to save the seat, and just sit in the seat. If something is on the seat, just pick it up and sit in the seat. Then give the item that was on the seat to the person who is trying to save the seat. If the person saving the seat objects, simply tell them Southwest has an open seating policy during boarding, first come first serve. If the person saving the seat calls over a flight attendant, don’t worry about it. Under normal circumstance, the flight attendant is not going to ask you to move, because they are not supposed to be taking a position on the saving of seats. Video record the situation if you can. Clearly, open seating during boarding means any seat not actually being occupied is available to be sit in. Clearly, the people in line first get the choice of available seats before those in line behind them. By having an open seating policy but not taking a position on saving seats, Southwest has setup a situation where passengers must confront fellow passengers to get the seat they deserve for the position in line they paid for, increasing the likelihood of problems in the cabin, and giving all involved a negative feeling about the experience of flying on Southwest. |
So rude |
There’s a disability lawyer who fervently hopes they make a decision like this. Insisting people with disabilities get lesser treatment is, in fact, the definition of discrimination. There is no value to Southwest in doing this because none of you people complaining are going to stop flying Southwest. They keep their money, and don’t get sued, by maintaining the current policy. |
It's not lesser treatment. Everyone can't sit in exit rows either. You can't argue lesser treatment when you get an accommodation like pre boarding at no extra cost when that isn't available to everyone. They are getting treatment above and beyond everyone else. |
Everyone can’t sit in exit rows because you need to be physically fit. There’s no fitness need to exclude people from bulkheads and in some circumstances bulkhead seating is probably preferred for people with mobility difficulties. Telling disabled people they’re not entitled to the seats open to *every other* passenger is, again, the kind of policies that disability lawyers salivate over. |
But *every other passenger* actually CANNOT sit in those seats because they are all taken by the preboarders. Those seats are unavailable to us, so no reason they need to be available to you. Southwest could sell them if they chose. They don’t have to provide a premium accommodation, just a “reasonable” one. The entitled folks already sued Disney and lost, bigly. |
Entitled? Interesting word choice. And clearly seats can be saved and apparently you aren’t entitled to sit there either. Not every seat is open to every passenger. |
Accommodations just need to be reasonable. Not better than, more generous, or beyond what other passengers get. Disney abusers found out the hard way that they can take too much and be too greedy and Disney now excludes them. The airlines will be next. |
Just stay mad and keep waiting for them to make this change for you. Any second now. |
Make what change for me? I pay to board early. I don't need to pretend to be disabled because I'm too poor to pay for the convenience. |
+1 I'm on SWA at least four times a year, often more, and haven't run into problems. And anyway if people *are* saving seats, there will be plenty of good seats left if you've paid for early boarding. I prefer flying Southwest to lots of other airlines. |
| I don’t like flying Southwest, so I don’t fly Southwest. See how easy this is? |