How can you sit together on Southwest?

Southwest Family Boarding: How to sit together The best way to ensure you sit together and where you want, is to buy a Business Select fare, upgrade your boarding pass or have the Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card or the Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card.



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Check in early. No seats are assigned on Southwest Airlines, but boarding positions are assigned at check-in. The earlier you check in, the better position you will secure for yourself. Check-In begins 24 hours prior to your departure time.

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Group Passengers can check in on Southwest.com and reserve their boarding positions beginning 24 hours prior to departure. The online check-in process for Group travel is slightly different than you may be used to for non-Group travel. Go to Southwest.com and click Check In to reserve your boarding positions.

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Southwest Airlines has long argued that its unassigned seating policy is popular with passengers and facilitates speedier boarding. That means planes spend less time at the gate and more time in the air generating Southwest money. Over the years, the airline has tinkered with the no-system boarding system.

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How to sit together on a flight for free
  1. Pick your airline carefully. ...
  2. Check-in early. ...
  3. Make a specific request. ...
  4. Ask another passenger to swap seats. ...
  5. Sit near the front or the back. ...
  6. Use a seat map. ...
  7. Choose a window seat. ...
  8. Select extra legroom.


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Re: Saving Seats Unfortunately, there's no policy to enforce. Officially, Southwest has no policy for or against seat saving, and in practice actively allows it. Reps will even suggest that passengers save seats for later boarding companions.

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Re: Assigned Seating and First Class Southwest has 52+ years experience that shows that open seating is far more operationally efficient than than assigned seating. Operational efficiency = more flights/day per plane which in turn allows SW to keep fares low.

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Customers who purchase an Anytime fare will automatically be checked in to their flight 36 hours prior to scheduled departure—that's 12 hours before our traditional 24-hour check-in. You will receive an earlier boarding position, improved seat selection, and earlier access to overhead bins.

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If you have a B group boarding position, the chances are good that you'll still be able to get a window or aisle seat or find 2 seats together if you're traveling with a companion. Hot Tip: If you are in the B group (or even one of the first numbers in the C group), head to the back of the plane.

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As of March 2023, only three airlines offer fee-free family seating -- Alaska Airlines, American Airlines and Frontier Airlines. American and Frontier both announced their new guarantees shortly after President Joe Biden excoriated airlines for junk fees during his State of the Union Address in early February.

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A strategy that travelers have been trying for years to varying degrees of success is the middle seat trick — when checking in online, two people traveling together will each select the aisle and window seats in a three-seat row and hope that the middle seat remains open.

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Table of contents
  1. Regularly Check the Seat map.
  2. Changing Seats in Flight.
  3. Make use of the Emergency Exit Rules.
  4. Ask the Gate Staff to Change Your Seat.
  5. Reserving Window and Aisle Seats.
  6. Sitting Further Back.
  7. Seat Blocking for Frequent Flyers.
  8. Most Important: Select Empty Flights.


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Saving one middle seat is always fine. Trying to save an aisle or window seat/reserving more than one seat with your stuff is where it crosses the line. I have no problem with someone saving the (middle) seat next to them for a travel partner boarding later in order.

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The vast majority of the time, passengers don't have any problems boarding their flights. But occasionally, airlines may “bump” passengers and have them give up their seats. Bumping, also known as “denied boarding,” happens when there are more passengers scheduled to fly on an airplane than available seats.

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As such, we do not publish flight loads. If for any reason you're uncomfortable traveling in the current environment and would like to discuss the flight load of your upcoming flight, we strongly encourage you to reach out to our Customer Service Department via any of the options below. Email here.

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Except for a few standard differences — like more legroom in the exit row — Southwest seats are all the same size.

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Overselling a flight can occur because of weight restrictions and aircraft type changes. We don't overbook as part of our philosophy of Customer-friendly policies. Will I be compensated for an oversold flight? When appropriate, we'll offer compensation when a flight is in an oversale situation.

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Once you earn it and pick your Companion, you can begin enjoying the benefits immediately after designating a Companion. You'll maintain your Companion Pass for the remainder of the calendar year in which you qualified and the entire calendar year immediately following the year you qualified.

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