They’re calling him a cheapskate.
As a result of refusing to pay for seat selection on a flight, a father of two was forced to sit separately from his tots — and people are taking the airline’s side.
Cory Watilo took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his rather frustrating experience recently flying Southwest Airlines with his family.
Alongside a screenshot of selecting from the drop-down menu on the airlines’ site that he was flying with little ones, the father of two wrote, “my wife and two kids (5 and 2) are flying @SouthwestAir today. and because i refuse to pay for seats, their seats were auto assigned. My 2 year old in his own row without his mom or sister. i sorta figured when the websites breaks out age 0-4, they’d factor this in but nah…”
Watilo’s assumption wasn’t wrong. If a flyer doesn’t pay for seat selection, their seat will be auto-assigned, and technically, airlines aren’t required to seat families together on a flight.
However, the Department of Transportation encourages airlines to at least ensure young flyers are seated with an accompanying adult, which clearly Southwest failed to do here.
So you can’t blame this annoyed father for feeling a certain way. However, his little rant of a post caused quite the stir online, garnering over 2 million views and a lot of mixed reactions.
“If you’re so cheap that you refuse to not pay for seat selection then why didn’t you put the 2 year old as a lap child?” one person snarkily asked.
Someone else chimed, blaming Watilo: “Not true. Unless you put their ages wrong. Just did a flight Saturday and they automatically assigned us seats together. Do you need me to do a tutorial for you. To disprove this?”
“Come on bro. I hate this SW BS as much as anyone out there. I can literally fly FREE with them and still pay now for other airlines… But this is a bit on you my man. You want your family to sit together ya gotta buy the seats,” quipped someone else.
“Bro, pay the money for your family to be together this isn’t difficult – penny pinch elsewhere,” another comment read.
Some, not many, came to Watilo’s defense: “The comments on this post are surprising. Your point is that their booking systems shouldn’t allow the child to be located away from the parents and at least be in the same row, but everyone’s saying it’s your fault.”
“…People are more focused on the dad as to why he didn’t pay rather than the greedy multi billion cooperation which is separating a family traveling together unless they pay up,” read another comment.
Despite the heated online debate Watilo’s post caused, the good news is that a kind flyer ended up switching seats with his wife, so none of their little ones were sitting alone.
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