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Hi all,
Does anyone have a way for getting good seats on a flight, without paying an arm and a leg, or waking up at 5AM just to check in? Can't decide what I hate more: 34B or waking up early...
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@kailwhales, fly a lot on SWA to get Alist Preferred or buy early bird. Sometimes that won’t get you even to the A group but on Southwest, the traditional seat assignments are not used. I set my alarm for the 24 hour mark, figuring I can check in and go back to whatever I was doing.
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@kailwhales @CareforNOLA consider it as practice - if you have to get up at 5 a.m. to check in, that means you have to get up at 2 a.m. the next day in order to actually fly, so it's more like running a half-marathon as a training run for a full marathon later.
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I agree and if I want to run a marathon OR get the best seat, I have to train. It took a heck of a lot of early mornings to get my A List Preferred, and after flying twice a week for three years, I still sometimes have a standard nightmare of missing flights (and missed one just recently). Early Bird is a nice alternative that SWA offers for a fairly reasonable price, and I usually buy it when purchasing for others.
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I try to get my boarding pass 24 hours in advance. I always ask the flight attendant if the flight is full. If it is, I choose my seat accordingly. If travelling alone I will take the first seat available which is usually in the first row. If I'm with someone we go back as far as we have to.
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If the flight is sparse, I head to the back with lots of chances to get at least a middle empty if not all three seats to myself. People sit next to each other in the front no matter how full the plane is.
For full flights, I like to get about 8 rows back. That's where the overheads will be full and all the last people on the plane will have to keep heading to the back, so best chance for a middle seat to be empty is in that neighborhood. I've heard it called "The Hidden First Class" of Southwest.
Also for short flights I forget which row exactly, but you want to be towards the first group to get drink orders in, but not for the front FA who has some extra duties, get the second section.
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