I think there's some advantage to the way Southwest did things without assigned seats. I'm not a pilot and only fly as a passenger about every 2 to 3 years. I normally do road trips for vacation with my kiddo, who's 10. But going to St. Thomas, no choice but to fly. It was my first flight with him since he was an infant. We flew on SouthernJets. I never gave assigned seats a thought, just a money grab, right? Admittedly, I'm not an experienced traveler and only recently started having the money to fly somewhere nice for vacation.
LIT-ATL-STT no problem, seats assigned together.
We were scheduled to depart on Monday this week when Delta was still recovering from the fiasco. The same flight had been canceled the 2 previous days. Thankfully we were able to depart the day we'd scheduled the flight and on time.
I look on our boarding passes and I notice STT-ATL we're in different parts of the plane. No way do I feel comfortable with my 10 y/o not sitting next to me on a 4 hour flight. I was thinking surely the airline wouldn't separate a parent and child on a plane. I talked to the gate agent who at least got us on the same row, seat B and D.
When booking the flight, it honestly never occurred to me to even check such a thing. Two tickets booked at the same time, parent and child, would naturally share the same adjacent seats and didn't give it a further thought when purchasing.
While waiting for the flight I started reading online and apparently there's no laws or rules about this. The DOT has a list of airlines that agree to seat parent and child under 13 together without charging extra and Delta ain't one of them. AA and UA were on the list. Lesson learned. If I ever fly on Delta again, I'll make sure to buy assigned seats. Good info to know because we're going to SFO for Fleet Week to see the Blue Angels fly. I've always wanted to see them fly over the bay there.
From STT to ATL, were able to sit together because asking the lady sitting in C to simply swap aisle seats wasn't a big deal. We get to ATL early a little before 7PM, off the plane about 7:10pm. For the hop to LIT, we were to be seated both in seat A on adjacent rows, which wasn't a big deal on an hour flight. But thanks to the travel fiasco, our 11 pm flight was scheduled to depart at 1:25 am. I was dreading spending 6+ hours in Atlanta, if the crew didn't time out. As we got off the flight, the Delta app showed a flight leaving at ~ 7:50 pm for LIT available. Make a mad dash 2 concourses over and got to the gate in time. No Shake Shack! Amazingly, we were seated together. Departed and arrive to LIT on time. In that short time window at ATL, our checked baggage somehow made it onto the re-booked flight. That was super impressive. We were very blessed to have no cancelations and arrive to our final destination on an earlier flight and time than originally planned on that crazy Monday.
So yes, lesson learned with making sure multiple tickets booked together are seated together. I think Southwest's method would had been easier since no one has claim to any given seat, but I guess that's coming to an end.
