serenitynow
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2005
One of Southwest’s ongoing issues - people who pay for early bird seating to select their seats vs. passengers who don’t want to spend the extra money for EBCI, but once they board the plane simply have to sit with their family, in essence selecting their seats.
Most people who paid for EBCI don’t want to trade seats with passengers who didn’t pay for EBCI and thus don’t volunteer to switch seats. Then a flight attendant has to threaten to hold up the plane until the family can all be seated together.
Officially, Southwest has NO policy on seat saving. A passenger can sit in any open seat, even if someone has put something in it to try and save it. The last couple of Southwest flights I have been on there has been an argument over seat saving on the plane. On two of those occasions, the person just sat down in the “saved” seat, regardless.
I suspect now that Southwest has raised the pricing on EBCI, we can look forward to seeing more of these seating scuffles. Some of the other airlines going to “budget” tickets don’t allow seat selection as an option. These tickets say the passenger cannot pick their own seat on the budget option and families won’t be seated together.
On a side note, the back of the plane usually has more open seating options on Southwest for those who chose to gamble on not purchasing EBCI.
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