The boarding process travelers experience on most major airlines involves simply being assigned a seat on the airplane and finding it.
There are, of course, ways to adjust things to a passenger's satisfaction. For example, a couple whose seats are not together can ask that the assignments be changed so that they are.
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If the airline staff is able to make these sorts of changes for a given flight, they generally will.
On Southwest Airlines (LUV) -), however, the boarding process is quite unlike most of its major competitors.
Southwest does not offer specific seat assignments for its passengers.
The airline, instead, groups passengers into A, B and C categories, and assigns numbers within each. So, as the A group boards first, it does so in numerical order.
As passengers board, they are able to claim any seat. In theory, it sounds simple enough.
In practice, however, one common behavior among people flying together with different boarding categories, is for an earlier boarder to try to save a seat for a later boarder.
That is, someone in the A group may try to save a seat for someone in the B or C group. Often, the seat being saved is a less desirable middle seat.
A passenger trying to discourage others from sitting in the middle seat next to them might also be flying alone, but hoping for the extra room an empty seat next to them would provide.
When a flight is not full, this is generally not much of a problem. However, on a full flight, things can get a bit difficult.
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A flight attendant takes to the intercom to chide seat savers
The Southwest Airlines cabin crew is always challenged to seat passengers as quickly as possible. And the flight attendants are quite aware of the tactics passengers use to discourage others from sitting in the seats next to them.
This was demonstrated recently on a Southwest flight as it was boarding. Captured on TikTok was a flight attendant saying over the intercom that all the seats would be filled, so there was no need to play games.
He did so with an original approach that both informed passengers of important information and offered some humor while he was at it.
"If you're trying to avoid the eye contact so nobody will sit in the middle, that's not going to work today," the flight attendant can be heard announcing.
"If you have a real or fake Louis bag in that middle seat so nobody will sit there, that's not going to work either," he continued.
"Yeah, full flight on a Saturday night up to San Jose," the flight attendant confirmed as the reason.
@boredsoap as you can see I was trying to do reverse psychology lol #southwest #fullflight #corporategirlie #humortiktok #avoideyecontact #lol
♬ original sound - sophizzles
Despite some of the seating uncertainty involved, one travel expert explained why he finds Southwest's boarding process to work for him at times.
"I like the way Southwest Airlines seats are divvied out first-come, first-served as someone who books last minute (good seats may not be available anymore on other airlines) and as someone who sometimes changes flights on the day of travel. They also offer an inch or two more legroom than other airlines in their standard seats," wrote Gary Leff on View From the Wing. "And I like that you can help control your own destiny over whether someone sits next to you or not – when the flight isn’t full."
Southwest Airlines, on its website, proposes its preferred way for passengers with differently ordered tickets to handle sitting together.
"In order to maintain the integrity of the boarding process, we ask that earlier boarding positions board with the later positions," Southwest wrote.
"For example, if a passenger is assigned position A16 and wants to board with a passenger assigned position A45, the passenger holding the A16 boarding pass should board with the A45 passenger."
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