What I’ll miss about Southwest Open seating — and what I won’t

By now you’ve already heard about the end of the Open Seating era on Southwest Airlines. If you’re a Southwest loyalist like I am, you probably have an opinion about this. But in case you don’t, you can borrow mine.

A lot of us Southwest fans clung to open seating perversely, much like writers who can’t stop hitting the space bar twice at the end of each sentence. Open seating is objectively not more efficient or better. It was just … part of our identity. We are Southwesties, and we line up according to the numbers on our boarding passes.

In that spirit:

What I’ll miss about Southwest Open Seating

1. The thrill of the chase. I love to optimize. If I can use my wits to get something a little better, I’m on top of the world. With open seating, I could approach each flight like a sporting event. Starting with the check in 24 hours in advance, it was a competition between me and all the other passengers to land my butt in the ideal seat.
   
2. Using my experience. The more Southwest flights I took, the more hacks I learned for snagging a seat I liked. I learned to ask the ground crew or flight attendants how full the flight was, because that would determine my strategy. With a full flight, I figured it was best to take the window or aisle seat closest to the front of the plane. With a partially empty flight, my goal shifted to having an empty middle seat in my row. So I would move farther back, then look over the already-seated passengers and try to pick someone who I thought no one else wanted to sit next to. I don’t want to insult anyone by revealing what sort of people I picked, but I will say I was rarely wrong.
   
3. Knowing I couldn’t get split from my kids. You hear all the time about airlines assigning a parent to row F and their small children to rows P and W. I don’t want to hear about how the parents should have planned ahead, blah blah blah. The truth is that plenty of times, airlines move people around after they reserve their seats together. But with Southwest, it was in my hands: as long as I did the work to get a decent boarding number and showed up on time, we’d be together. I sat with my kids on Southwest from the days when I was lugging car seats on board through their college tours and moving to college using my miles.

What I won’t miss about Southwest Open Seating

1. Being afraid to make last-minute changes. Sometimes, you get to an airport hours before the flight you’re booked on — and there’s an earlier flight to your destination available. You might ask to fly standby. I think, as an A-Lister, I even have the opportunity to switch flights with no wait list. BUT, with open seating, I know that if I change flights on the day of, I’ll end up with the worst boarding position. Of course, with assigned seats, the good ones will probably still be taken at the last minute, but at least you would have an assignment.
   
2. Feeling punished for getting delayed. On Southwest, if something goes wrong during your travel day and you get to your gate a little late, it feels like a disaster. You missed your boarding group — which you might have paid extra for — and now your family will probably have to split up. Or if you’re flying alone, you’re definitely going to be wedged betwen the two strangers no one else wanted to sit by. But with assigned seating, strolling up to the gate just before the doors close will be fine.
   
3. Side eyeing the cheaters. In the past year or so, a lot of folks online have noticed preboarding lines growing longer. Preboarding is an important service for people who need extra time — like those with disabilities — to get to their seats. I’m sure most of the people pre-boarding really need it. But when a third of the plane is full before A group starts boarding, you kind of have to wonder: Did fully 30 percent of this flight have disabilities? Maybe, maybe not. I look forward to not caring who preboards, because it won’t affect me once I have a seat reservation.
   
4. Feeling bad about saving seats. This is one I’ve been on both sides of. When trying to fly next to our kids, Erik and I have encountered people saving seats for folks in a later boarding group. They’ll claim the person is in the bathroom. We knew they were lying, and that made us feel bad about the state of humanity. On the other hand, I have totally been guilty of saving seats myself. Would I persist in trying to save them if it meant another family couldn’t sit together? No. But have I sat in the aisle seat with my bag under the window seat, hoping to preserve a whole row near the front for my huband and kid? Yep. Guilty!

What will you miss about Southwest’s Open Seating policy? Or will you enjoy flying Southwest more once you have a seat assignment?