Articles labeled: southwest airlines

A 29-year-old has been charged with restraining a teenage girl’s hand during a flight from San Diego to Denver. Did he think nobody would notice?

[Ezra James] Wallace was in a window seat on the plane, and the sisters were in the row’s other two seats, according to the affidavit. Before the plane took off, Wallace took pictures of the teen seated in the aisle seat. She covered her face to try to block the photos. During the flight, Wallace grabbed the hands of her sister in the middle seat, and bound them tightly with athletic tape.

He then attempted to bind the other girl’s hands, the affidavit said, but a flight attendant intervened and moved the girls to another row.

Wallace said he drank about a half-pint of vodka prior to the incident, the affidavit said.

Perhaps the more amazing part, he’s done it before. And how did he get to the airport?

A 10-year-old boy apprehended last year after a flying to Texas as a stowaway was caught Tuesday trying to board another flight out of Sea-Tac Airport.

Semaj Booker was a short stroll away from a departing Southwest Airlines flight when, just after 6:30 a.m., a gate agent stopped the boy. Airport authorities returned the boy to his mother’s home in Tacoma, from where he’d been reported missing.

Transportation Security Administration officials are looking into how Semaj made it through a TSA checkpoint without a boarding pass just before 5 a.m., agency spokesman Dwayne Baird said.

Southwest Airlines, in an attempt to tweak their “cattle call” boarding procedure and make it even more annoying, have decided that families flying with small children will no longer be able to be the first to board:

The airline, which carries more than one in three Phoenix passengers, is eliminating early pre-boarding for families beginning Oct. 2 in a bid to speed the boarding process.

Families with children four and under will now board after the first regular boarding group unless they have an A boarding pass to be in that first group. Southwest famously doesn’t assign seats. Passengers board in three groups, A, B and C, with their letter determined by when they checked in.

Passengers can check in online 24 hours before their flight, and many people fanatically watch the clock to make sure they snag an A boarding pass and their pick of seats. Families didn’t have to fret if they didn’t snag an A pass since they preboarded.

So, if you’re, say, taking care of your kids and not sitting in front of your laptop frantically hitting refresh trying to score an “A” pass, you’re SOL. And of course it will make it SO much easier when a family boards later and can’t find seats together. Most importantly, given their “bus in the sky” approach, if I’m flying sans kids I *want* families to board first so I can make sure to sit way the hell away from them. No offense, I feel their pain of course, but I mean let’s be honest — would you sit next to someone else’s kids if you had a choice?

No word on if disabled and elderly still board early, or if they have to hit people with their crutches and fend for themselves.