Humanity at 30,000 feet
You can pick your seat on Southwest, but choose wisely and be prepared to own your decision.
As the warrior-poet Pusha T once wrote, if you know, you know. Well, folks, I happen to know that if a Southwest flight lands at Burbank Airport, they deplane from both the front and back of the aircraft.
Armed with this knowledge, I formulated a strategy prior to boarding. The computer, which can be a capricious overlord, had dealt me a challenging, but playable hand with the A-45 boarding position. I knew that wouldn’t be good enough to snag an aisle seat near the front of the plane and get overhead bin space for my rolling bag. But perhaps, I thought, A-45 might be good enough to grab an aisle seat and overhead bin space at the very back of the plane. I crossed my fingers and let the indifferent gate agent scan my boarding pass.
At first, things looked bleak. The first dozen rows were packed. Then, over the intercom, a flight attendant broke the bad news.
“Folks, this is a completely full flight to Burbank,” the flight attendant said. “Chances are you’re not going to get the seat you …
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Situation Normal to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.