When Southwest Airlines announced it would abandon its fifty-year policy of letting passengers sit wherever they want, I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad decision.
Southwest is the only airline we fly domestically, and I’ve always found its personnel a pleasure to deal with. The only problem I have is when I can’t get a seat in an emergency exit row, which gives me more legroom. As a large person, I need those few extra inches, so over the years I have tried to upgrade to a boarding number that would give me the best chance at those seats. But it didn’t always work out. On newer 737s (the only aircraft Southwest flies), there are two exit rows, but their older planes have only one, thus reducing my opportunities.
Sometimes a flight is full and there are no upgrades available. On other occasions, there are similarly tall humans ahead of me and they grab those exit row seats. Okay, they have a right to be comfortable, too. I only get seriously annoyed when shorter people — who didn’t need the extra legroom — take those seats before I have a chance to get there. I wish the airline had something like the signs at amusement parks: “You must be at least six feet tall to sit in this row.”
Aside from being in an exit row, I prefer to have an aisle seat. Because of my claustrophobia, I can’t sit in a window seat, jammed up against the wall. And the middle seat is just torture for people of my girth — or anyone who doesn’t want to play the who-gets-the-armrest game.
The problem with sitting in an aisle seat is having to duck out of the way of my fellow passengers as they come aboard with backpacks or other items that invariably slam into my shoulder as they go by. To avoid them, I lean all the way into the center seat until someone sits there, at which point the practice is frowned upon.
Sure, being on the end means having to get up when my seatmates want to go to the bathroom, but the rest of the time, I can give some relief to the muscles in one leg by extending it out into the aisle. That’s less of a problem on Southwest than other airlines, because they don’t use beverage carts. Instead, the flight attendants use trays to deliver drinks, reducing the chance I’ll be awakened from a nap by a big metal object slamming into my ankle or knee.
So, after thinking it through, I have decided that Southwest using assigned seating could be a boon for people my size. If, as reports indicate, the airline is going to create more rows with extra legroom that I can reserve ahead of time, I’ll gladly pay the upcharge.