Reply to Anyone not been able to sit next to their kids on Southwest?

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[quote=Anonymous]We fly pretty frequently with our 3 kids, and I have found that, whether on Southwest or another airline that assigns seats, I need to "bite the bullet" and pay a small premium to ensure that we can sit together.  Airlines used to consider this part of the cost of the ticket, but now families basically must accept that sitting together is considered an amenity and therefore you must pay something for it.

So on Delta, if I am booking our tickets within 4-6 weeks of travel (and therefore a lot of seats are already booked), I usually need to buy the choice seats so that my DH can sit with one child, and I can sit with the other two kids.  If even the choice seats are booked, I've always been able to ask a gate agent or flight attendant to assist at the airport.

And on Southwest, I usually buy Early Bird so that I'm pretty much guaranteed a "B" boarding position and that about half of the seats on the plane will still be empty when we board (which means we can always find 2 seats together and 3 seats together).  I like Southwest because, even if I'm booking 4-6 weeks out, I'm not shut out of the decent seats, as I would be if I were booking on Delta.   If I'm feeling cheap, instead of buying Early Bird, I'll just set my calendar to check in online exactly 24 hours in advance because we usually get B30 or thereabouts, which means that at least 30 percent of the seats will still be available when we board.  Finally, even though "family boarding" (between the A and B groups) is technically only for kids under the age of 5, we have sometimes asked if we could use family boarding even when our kids were 5 and 6 years old, and the agents have said "sure."

Worst case scenario, if we're on the plane and not able to find seats together, we have always been able to ask a flight attendant to help us with reseating.  I'm never afraid to ask a flight attendant to assist.  I just ask nicely.  (I used to carry Starbucks gift cards to give to anyone who was nice enough to move for us, but I find I really don't need to do it.)  The only situation where it didn't work for us was when my 7 year old was in one middle seat, and I was in the middle seat across the aisle.  So we were close.[/quote]

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