Southwest to test assigned seating

here’s is the story link.

chicagotribune.com/business/ … siness-hed

The problem is if you want to sit by your family. I enjoy selecting my seats!

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This has been discussed and updated…dbaker, can we get this update moved to the original thread???

Guess what? You are more apt to be able to sit by your family if you have open seating rather than reserved seating. You get into group A (real easy - check in online) and then you line up in the Group A line. Your board the plane. Even if you have, say a family of 4 and are at the very end of line A, by the time you get on the plane only 26 seats (30 minus 4) have been claimed. This leaves you with 96 or 111 seats (see below) that are wide open. The majority of these will be groups of 3. It’s quite possible you will also get the emergency seating row with its additional legspace or the bulkhead seats.

Now, if you use an airline that requires you to pick you seat in advance, you will not be able to chose the bulkhead seats or emergency row in advance. If you don’t book early enough, you will probably have to chose seats that are not together.

Believe me, open seating is the only way to go!

Seats:
737-700, 737-300 have 137 seats. 137 minus 26 is 111
737-500 have 122 seats. 122 minus 26 is 96

Not only that, but the one time I flew with WN with my family, we talked to the gate agent, and they made sure we all sat together.

See when I went on an AA flight and they picked our seats for us, I was across the isle from my family. There was a guy on the end of the row that kept hitting on this woman for the entire four hour flight. It was at night and I didn’t get a bit of sleep… That’s why I like to pick my seats!

You were across the island (“isle”) from your family? Think you meant “aisle.”

Anyway, had you been on Southwest, you and your family could have picked your own seats and could have possibly moved to another row. I don’t know how many people are in your family but if it is 5 or 6 you could have had an ENTIRE ROW TO YOURSELF (both sides of the aisle) without any of the bad guys sitting in it.

Have you flown on Southwest?

Come on it’s summer break. Well we picked our tickets for next’s month trip on the internet. That was before we could pick our seats on the internet. And no to the Southwest. Doesn’t serve KDAY. But, i’ve watch airline! Cool show if you havn’t seen it. Series about Southwest and thier problems. On A&E.

You will notice that some of us on here aren’t totally out of touch. You will see the joke of a show “Airline” (which usually fulfills my allowance of yelling at stupid people without getting my life threatened), reference “King of Cars” and “Dog.”

BTW, you have been able to pick you seats online when you book for a couple of years…minimum.

Quite frankly, I don’t know why Southwest is still involved with that piece of crap called “Airline.” It shows very atypical passengers (maybe 0.5%) and shows very little about actual behind-the-scenes airline operations.

The show would have been great as a 2-3 hour documentary. The documentary could have given a history of Southwest and its struggle to operated out of DAL at the beginning. Then it could have gone on to show what it takes to operate an airline. This would include how aircraft how dispatched, what it takes to be in the flight crew (both cockpit and cabin), the back office things like reservations, etc.

EDIT: “Airline” is based on a British show that shows what goes on at LHR (London Heathrow). I can’t remember if the British show is called “Airline” or “Airport.” In any case, it is slightly more interesting as it covers a wide variety of airlines at a major international airport.

Airport…it sucks, too.

That’s why I said “slightly more interesting.” Actually, maybe 1% more.

Does anybody know if there are any DVDs or shows out there that present the real (as opposed to the so-called reality show) side of commercial aviation?

I can tell you watch A&E. It was like at least five years ago. It may have been out but we never knew about it.

I remember watching that show on the now defunct Discovery Wings Channel. They also made another version, after the success of Airline in the US, based at Luton, but it really wasn’t as good.