You can forgive Southwest passengers for getting up to various shenanigans in order to make the travel experience a little more pleasant these days. The outdated software meltdown brought on by bad weather over the holidays will go down in aviation and meme history as a mess of not insignificant proportions. However, opinions seem divided on whether the antics of a couple traveling with the airline in late November, before the holiday chaos, were fun, immoral, or merely incredibly annoying. A video has surfaced of two passengers blocking the seat between them while waiting for the 'perfect neighbor' to appear.For the previous sentence to make sense, we should probably mention, for those not familiar with the matter, that Southwest Airlines operates an 'open seating' policy. Rather than being given seat numbers and associated letters, passengers are simply given zones for boarding (A, B, or C) and a boarding position from 1 to 60, and then they must find a seat as they embark.On November 28, a couple was traveling with the Dallas-based LCC and decided that they did not want to share their row with just any random passenger. As such, they grabbed the aisle and the window seat (counting on no one preferring the middle before all the other A, C, D, and F seats would have been filled) and waited for the ideal candidate to walk past.

Profile set to private after video went viral

Several sources, such as The Independent, have linked to a video recorded by one-half of the couple and posted to their Instagram profile. However, quite potentially due to the video going viral and the immense interest (and, we shudder to think, amount of comments), their profile has now been set to private mode. As such, we can only share a couple of screenshots from the video featured by other social media accounts.

Reportedly, when a young man wearing headphones (unlikely to strike up an unwelcome conversation or wrestle over the armrest?) approached the row, the woman in the aisle seat turned to her husband and pointed to the man. After what was most likely a sign of agreement from the man holding the camera, she taps the young man on the shoulder and asks him if he would like to share their row. The video was captured with "Southwest etiquette" and the description "Southwest flight. We took the aisle and window until we found the right person.”

Morally justifiable?

While we all like to share our personal space with people we find agreeable, there are all kinds of moral objections one could raise in this instance. What is a 'right' person? What do they look like? Of course, commenters were not slow to pick up on such issues, and some called the couple's behavior childish. Meanwhile, others shared similar stories, such as dressing up carry-on backpacks with a jacket and hat to claim the third seat.

What is your take on reserving seats for the "right" person to come along? Share your thoughts in the comment section, but keep it civil, please.

Source: The Independent