I’m a big boy. I can fly by myself.
But on a recent flight home, my wife and I were separated.
“What boarding group are we in?” I asked, poking my finger through a bag of pre-flight M&M’s in search of an elusive green.
“Four,” she said.
“No,” I said, looking up. “That can’t be right.”
Sitting at Gate 17 at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, I was reminded never to doubt my wife.
Two days after our 33rd wedding anniversary, Southwest Airlines decided that we should split up. We’d fallen prey to one of the dumber recent airline decisions, annoying loyal fliers by charging more to sit together.
I was in group three, she was in four. For us, a couple of mature Americans capable of sitting apart for a 110-minute flight, it was an annoyance.
For families with young kids, nervous flyers or anyone with good reason to lean into the person next to them — this is dumb, dumb, dumb.
It is one of a raft of policy changes by the low-cost carrier in 2025. The most infamous was the end of free checked bags.
At the time, I wrote that the predictions of Southwest’s doom were exaggerated. I still believe that, particularly for flyers locked into BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. Southwest operates 74% of its flights.
Since then, it’s become clear that Southwest sees passenger goodwill as unbankable currency. Disgruntlement is baked into their cost-benefit analysis.
“This is a completely full flight, completely full,” the gate attendant announced before our flight from Louisville to BWI. “I need 14 volunteers to check their carry-on bags at the gate, completely free of charge.
“If not, we’ll have to select 14 passengers at random.”
I wondered if her threat to confiscate carry-ons was aimed at anyone other than basic flyers.
I asked Southwest to explain the seating roulette. Complaints from separated flyers have been bubbling up since the airline ended open seating in January.
“On full flights especially, it’s not always an option,” spokesman Chris Perry said. ”Customers who desire to be seated together are encouraged to purchase a Choice fare."
If you buy a basic fare, you get a seat 24 hours before the scheduled departure time. When the airline spins the wheel, sometimes you win, sometimes you sit next to an 11-year-old playing video games instead of your wife.
Four months into the new system, the fix is to pay $30 to $60 over the basic fare for assigned seats.
Southwest says it tries to seat children 12 and under with an accompanying older passenger. If that doesn’t work, it recommends asking a flight or gate attendant for help.
It now offers four differently priced options for tickets, from basic to Choice to Choice Preferred and to the most expensive, Choice Extra.
Southwest isn’t alone in squeezing more out of its passengers.
Most airlines have a $5-and-$10 (inflation being what it is, nickel-and-dime ain’t enough anymore) approach to the flying masses. Families with young kids can work around it by asking adjacent passengers to swap.
Is Southwest so cash-strapped that it can’t afford to match Alaska, American, Frontier, JetBlue and Hawaiian airlines’ guarantee that families with young kids can sit together at no extra cost? Apparently.
I don’t want to blow this out of proportion. Airlines operate in a tough economy, squeezed between rising jet fuel prices and complaints like mine.
My wife and I can afford the extra fees, though we’d rather use it for something else. I enjoy a good green M&M before boarding, but the R&R Seafood Bar on Concourse A is a much better place to wait.
And both of us did end up with window seats.
Our plane flew over Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay on a sunny evening, a rare chance to search for our house in the glowing stretch of green and blue below.
This isn’t even the biggest subject of complaint among Southwest passengers, if the airline’s unofficial community on Reddit is to be believed. People are still unhappy about inadequate legroom, forcing the plus-sized to buy two seats, and luggage. Always luggage.
Southwest ended free baggage check but doesn’t have room for every passenger to stow carry-on bags aboard. The Boeing 737-700 we flew carries 140 passengers, with room for only about 130 bags in the overhead bins.
That makes it more likely that carry-on space will be gone if you sit in the back of the plane — where the airline herds its basic-fare, randomly seated fliers. Gate attendants size up the crowd, then decide whose bag gets the hook.
United Airlines and some budget European carriers give you even less, requiring basic flyers only one small personal item that fits under the seat. Bins cost more.
We checked our bag, but still had to wait as those around us reverse-Jenga’d their little suitcases full of underwear, face nostrums and other essentials into the overhead bins.
Southwest says it’s learning from the changes as it goes and may refine them even further.
The significance of petty charges is the lack of respect they demonstrate. Airlines believe that if passengers want to be treated with dignity, it will should cost extra.
Maybe there is a fix for this.
Maryland has invested in making Southwest Airlines the state’s dominant carrier.
Taxpayers have poured billions into BWI, always with an eye toward its biggest airline’s benefit. There’s a reason R&R Seafood Bar is on Concourse A: It’s exclusive to Southwest.
Maybe it’s time that BWI and its CEO Shannetta Griffin recruit more competition.
Our flight was fine. We landed seven minutes early, and the 11-year-old and his dad next to me were perfectly polite. We didn’t even wrestle over the armrest. I caught a nap.
But if another airline could get me where I want to go for a comparable price, seated next to my sweetie — with no fees for love — I’d prep for takeoff.
It’s a fantasy. I doubt I’m alone in dreaming it.
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