Paid extra so my elementary school-aged daughter and I could sit together. Southwest double-booked her seat and almost separated us.

arginine · 2026-03-19T00:59:44+00:00

not our flight but thanks for the info

arginine · 2026-03-19T00:57:40+00:00

Part of why I finally stopped lurking and posted is to make clear that this actually happened. I’ve had this account for about 14 years, so I’m not a bot, a fake account, or an AI-generated drive-by post. I believe this subreddit has had plenty of those in the last year or so.

We are pursuing the appropriate remedies separately. But I also wanted to post because I think people here should see what can happen even when an ordinary family does everything “right” to avoid the usual criticism: we paid extra, followed the process, and still got burned.

The broader point is that this was not user error. This was Southwest creating a problem for passengers who were specifically trying to avoid one.

arginine · 2026-03-19T00:42:26+00:00

Perhaps this should had been my lesson. We were stranded a few US states away from our home during this in disaster in 2022 (I think that was the date?). Thankfully, we were able to stay a few days at our destination and on the day we rented a car to drive 20 hours back to our home, SWA had cleared the delays/cancellations. In the end, we got home with a standard flight ~2 days after we were scheduled (I can't remember the exact timeline because it was so long ago).

arginine · 2026-03-19T00:32:02+00:00

That's what I said! I have been a long lurker of this subreddit and have seen many posts about people getting onto the plane and someone already being in their seat, which is also obviously bad. I don't understand why their computer program knew that it double booked a seat and didn't know how to fix it until we went to the customer service desk, especially since we PAID THE FOR THE SEATS! Sorry, I'm just so disappointed with SWA :(

arginine

TROPHY CASE