Tag Archives for seats.
A woman on Southwest Airlines may have set a record by occupying 13 seats prior to departure. She boarded early and saved seats for 12 other passengers – four rows of seats seats apiece.
Southwest Airlines doesn’t pre-assign seats. Once you board you can take any open seat. There’s no rule against saving seats for other passengers. And it’s perfectly acceptable to subtly discourage other passengers from sitting beside you, though if they want to take the empty seat next to you they can.
In this Hunger Games world of Southwest Airlines seat selection there’s basic game theory to defend and expand your turf.
A young woman was shocked at the start of a 10 hour Lufthansa flight in economy, as a woman “shoved [her] seat forward” and told her that she’s “not allowed to recline” for the duration of the trip. Why? Because “it’s too much for her.” She asks her audience what she should do?
There’s something special about flying an international widebody plane like a Boeing 787 on a domestic flight. That’s doubly true when you’re flying up front. A lie flat seat in business class for a shorter trip is a real indulgence.
One passenger was upgraded on a 787 flying domestically within Canada and was given one of the two seats in the center section of the aircraft….
The pair booked window and aisle seats. When a middle seat passenger showed up on the Saturday flight, Congresswoman Pelosi gave him the window seat. This is being touted in the media as offering that passenger an “upgrade” rather than “strategy.”
Last week Southwest Airlines unveiled images of its new cabin and seats. It was striking that these seats look thin and not well padded – a genuine downgrade from the older tan seats that are still flying and even less comfortable than the seats in the 737 MAX 8 today.
They’re not adding more seats to the planes. So what are they doing with the extra room they create?
President Biden is calling for airlines to allow families to sit together on flights for free. Now, unlike the previous President he doesn’t run his own social. And no doubt this tests well. But airlines charging families more so that their kids aren’t unsupervised on planes just doesn’t seem to be an actual problem.
I find the older tan seats more comfortable than the ones in the 737 MAX 8 today, and I expect more comfortable than these new Recaro seats will be.
I’ve reached out to Southwest about whether their new pilot contract contains changes that would make it easier to add seats.
A young woman flying cross country found herself in the gate area noticing a demanding passenger. This older woman, with a six or seven year old son, was “demanding things from the airport staff.”
Once the plane boarded this passenger went to her middle seat, only to find that the mother and son showed up at her row. They were assigned the window and aisle seats and she was between them.
A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight from Washington DC to Dallas snapped a photo of an entire row of seats blocked off using bags of donuts. The passenger who did it wasn’t even seated in the row but nearby, saving those seats for their family.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
