Southwest also doesn’t overbook. Nothing like having a family of 5, with a carefully arranged vacation and seats chosen months ago, just not allowed on the plane (“but we have room for 2 of you”). Our family found US Air too risky to ever fly again.
To be fair, the lack of complications was only partially due to your diligence. The best laid plans, as they say. We’ve had hitches more times than not.
Long sigh…
A recent problem on SW flights is people boarding in the A group holding seats for their relatives and friends in the B and C groups. Clearly not allowed but they do it anyway. I’ve seen one mom hold two seats for her college age daughters, and another young man hold two seats for one friend (and lying about the middle seat being taken) all the way through boarding. I wanted to kick his seat! If DH was with me they wouldn’t have gotten away with it. If it really made a difference I would call the flight attendant to clarify the rules for the entitled passengers.
^^ Yeah, I’ll pay extra for Jetblue, thanks.
We were waiting for a flight and at the gate we were sitting across from a mother with her young daughter. The young daughter and the mother was very clearly conversing in very clear English.
We boarded the flight and the mother and daughter were seated behind us at the back of the plane. The daughter would not sit in her seat and was flipping the tray on my seat and jumping around. This was before take off.
The flight attendant came to tell the mother the child had to be buckled in and the tray needed to be locked. All of a sudden the mother conveniently acted as if she did not speak any English. She acted as if she did not understand and refused to buckle her daughter. They were now holding our flight to try to get this woman to “understand”.
Eventually after enough “charades” and “modified sign language” the woman buckled her screaming child in. As soon as the flight attendant left the child squirmed out of her seat, flipped down the tray on the back of my seat and the plane took off with the child crawling under the seats. The mother made no move whatsoever to control this child. And the charade of pretending to not speak English was ridiculous.
^^ Unbelievably annoying! And I suppose that if you had said that you heard them speaking English earlier you would have been cast as the bad guy.
If your child is kicking the seat in from of them, and if you as a parent fail to put a stop to this, the person in front has every right to say something. I’m a parent but it infuriates me when parents do not control their children on flights (or in restaurants). Planes and public spaces are not playgrounds.