Celebrating the Joy of Having an Assigned Airplane Seat
An important message from the D boarding group
By Ed Goldman
Until I started flying on Southwest Air, I never knew the following conversation could take place in a boarding line:
UPSET TRAVELER: I’m B-26. What’re you?
ME (Scrambling to look at my boarding pass): Uh—B-27.
UPSET TRAVELER (Reddening): You’re behind me, man!
ME: Oh. Sorry, I didn’t—
UPSET TRAVELER: Move it! We’re gonna board in a few minutes!
Aisle be damned
Even as a grade-school kid, I liked having an assigned seat. I didn’t much care about its location—though if it was too far back I might have complained because I was nearsighted then but had yet to get my first pair of eyeglasses. Today, when I go to the theatre or fundraising event, I have an assigned seat (or in the case of a fundraiser, table).
So why is it that after going through the obstacle gauntlet of TSA at a yet-to-be-explained breakneck pace, I still need to engage in combat to find a seat (usually, two seats) on Southwest Airlines?
Oh, you can phone 24 hours in advance and reserve a place in the aisle you’ll be standing in as they call your flight. But even if you call exactly 24 hours in advance, you’ll often find yourself assigned to the “B” line because either people somehow already reserved all the slots in the “A” aisle by paying more or by engaging in time-travel. I suspect the former is the case but am just crazy about the second possibility.
Travel, even if it’s for business, needn’t be this nerve-rattling. There’s no reason why…:
– TSA agents need to shout you through the put-everything-you-own-in-the-laundry-basket process;
– We have to be stressed about getting an aisle position; or
– Boarding the plane should be so anxiety-ridden—a process made all the more irritating by the flight attendants telling us to scurry to find a seat and cram our steamer-trunk-on-wheels into the overhead kindergarten cubicles so that the flight we’re about to take, which has been delayed an hour (for which we’re somehow made to feel guilty) can begin its taxiing procedure.
Brief digression. Isn’t this your favorite pre-flight announcement? “Folks, this is a completely sold-out flight so please find a goddamn seat and sit the hell down, fahcrissakes! ‘The hell’s the matter with you morons?!” At least that’s what I think I hear them say.
On a couple of flights last fall, both in-state and outta-, I had the chance to compare and contrast the “fun” folks at Southwest with the semi-serious attendants at Alaska Airlines. On Alaska, even a one-hour flight provided us with assigned seats, providing a bit of calm in the eye of the synapse storm of modern aviation.
Alaska also provided me with an amenity I assumed would never be available to me in either this lifetime or the next (presuming reincarnation actually works): legroom. I was able to cross my legs without contorting my upper and lower bodies into something resembling a kinetically challenged zopf. (“Zopf” is a twisty French bread. I’d have said “pretzel” but I strive to make this column fun and educational—something that can be assigned as supplemental reading in the nation’s classrooms.)
In closing, I’d like to imagine that in Heaven, if it exists and if I pass the physical to get in—e.g., I’m inarguably dead—I won’t have to scramble all over the place or stand in line. I’m hoping an assigned cloud will be awaiting my arrival. If so, I feel certain it’ll also have a storage bin large enough for me to stow my harp. Talk about your friendly skies.
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Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
