Southwest Now Forces Passengers To Sit Next To Oversized Seatmates—Flight Attendants Won’t Let You Move, Even Into Empty Rows


Southwest Airlines has had assigned seating for about four weeks, and what’s most shocking about it isn’t the fees it’s how strict the airline is about not letting customers move around in the cabin when flights are nearly empty.

  • Passengers used to choose their seat when they boarded. There was a rush for the best seats. On flights that weren’t full, everyone just spread out.
  • On most airlines you have an assigned seat, but when there are plenty of empty seats it’s ok to still spread out (but not to take an extra legroom seat if you haven’t paid for it). Delta’s rules are explicit about allowing this.
  • Southwest is an outlier. Southwest Airlines doesn’t just assign seats and sell seats, they’ve been enforcing seat assignments like nobody else. Here’s 26 passengers on a flight with six people in the same row and “3 specific announcements not to move seats.”

Customers on Southwest report that if they’re in a middle seat and the window next to them is empty, they’re scolded not to move into it. They can’t leave that middle seat empty between the passenger in the window and aisle. You must take your originally-assigned seats. They’ve been told they couldn’t use an empty seat next to them for their lap infant.

And there’s a real problem. When you buy your seat assignment, you don’t know whom you’re sitting next to. Now, you may get stuck next to a passenger of size. They’re spilling into your seat. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to move into another seat. Here you aren’t even getting the seat you paid for – because part of it is being forcefully taken by someone else!

Some readers have reacted to this and says ‘that’s how assigned seats work’ but it isn’t. Here’s Delta’s rule allowing moving to an empty seat in the same cabin subject to crewmember discretion.

If you and another customer agree to swap seats, please try to do so before departure whenever possible.

Any swap between cabins/seat products must be completed before in-flight service begins. After service starts, moving between classes is not permitted.

If you’d like to move to an unoccupied seat within your ticketed cabin/seat product during the flight, please ask a flight attendant — changes are at the crew’s discretion and depend on safety considerations.

Southwest’s assigned seating is punitive. They went from most flexible to most draconian overnight. They want to enforce revenue protection – afraid that passengers might somehow get more value than they’ve paid for, and skip ponying up if there’s a chance they can do better on board.

They ‘solved for the equilibrium’ of an activist investor threatening their jobs. But with that investor paring down their stake and losing board seats, it’s time to pivot towards regaining some of their soul.

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Southwest Now Forces Passengers To Sit Next To Oversized Seatmates—Flight Attendants Won’t Let You Move, Even Into Empty Rows
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Igor Jeuhan