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In other news, lengthy headlines start making a comeback

By Ed Goldman

Southwest Airlines, my usual Go-To carrier—since it’ll Go-To places I Go-To—is saying that in the ambiguous future it’s going to dump its longtime sit-anywhere-you-can policy and start assigning us seats when we buy our tickets. This makes me feel bad for psychologists who specialize in the causes and reduction of stress since they’ll be losing a vital profit center.

Allow me to dilate on that point a little. (Don’t worry. If I over-dilate you’ll be given plastic tinted glasses to wear before you leave the office.) 

If you’ve ever flown Southwest you know that an unfortunate part of the experience is trying to time your call or click so that exactly 24 hours before your flight you can reserve your place in the boarding line. However, if you blink—or have something else going on in your life besides booking that flight tomorrow—you’ll find yourself, as we recently did, assigned to boarding-line numbers B-57 and -58. This resulted in our getting two seats together (for which I’m grateful) but in the very last row of the plane. I think the handful of people behind us in the Cs boarding line were provided with sturdy straps attached to the fuselage.

We were seated so close to the plane’s aft kitchenette that we could actually hear the flight attendants argue about the “guy who ordered the Virgin Mary.” I guess because Southwest doesn’t make any dough on its non-alcoholic drinks, the attendants might have felt they’d be letting down their bosses when someone ordered the mix but not the booze it’s meant to support.

Full disclosure: I was that guy. Oh, I yearned for vodka, all right—but I was concerned that after a sleep-deprived mini-vacation, an actual Bloody Mary might make me pass out on the Lionel model train that transports you about 100 yards from tarmac to terminal at what feels like warp speed if you don’t grab hold of something two seconds after you board. (You really must fly into Sacramento International Airport at your next opportunity for a choo-choo ride.)

I’m not sure that assigned seating is going to be a stress reducer when it begins. The airline hasn’t shared with we, the people what the rules of competition will be to get an assigned seat. Will it involve the same machinations it takes to obtain a favorable boarding spot (the A line, 1-15)? Will you need to set several alarms throughout your house, as well as on your phone, computer and wristwatch, to ensure your seat assignments won’t be overturned trash cans in the aforementioned aft kitchenette? And will we discover, as we have with the open-seating policy, that even when you call at the precise moment you’re already back in the B section because others had made pre-reservations?  

The airline also announced it would be providing red-eye flights and even expanding customer legroom (for a price), though those details won’t be shared until September. Even so, my hamstring pulls and neuropathic cramps, brought on by stuffing a man almost six feet tall into a space that would make a Pomeranian claustrophobic, sincerely thank you in advance.

As for paying more for legroom so you can arrive at your destination not resembling a vertical accordion in mid-squeeze, this seems less like a customer-friendly amenity than a corporate-greedy ploy. 

Why shouldn’t everyone who pays all that money to ride in a plane be as comfortable as possible, considering they’ll soon be hurtling through the ether at 40,000 feet, doing 575-600-some miles per hour and all the while fearing almost equally that the plane will crash or the guy in front will decide to dramatically recline his seat just as you set your Virgin Mary on the baby-tray attached to the back of it? 

For our European readers—both of you—that speed would be around 770 to 930 kilometers per hour or somewhere between Mach 0.74 and Mach 0.8.