A video of a couple’s “hilarious” way of bagging a row to themselves on a Southwest Airlines flight has gone viral on TikTok, where it has received 1.5 million views.
The clip was shared on May 22 by O’Connor Family Law (@oconnorfamilylaw), the TikTok account of a divorce and custody law firm based in Massachusetts. A message overlaid on the video reads: “How to keep a row to yourself on Southwest.”
Heather O’Connor, a 46-year-old attorney who owns the law firm, told Newsweek that she and her husband, Tim Rowland, were traveling back home to Massachusetts from Florida. Onboard, they tried out this “method” of securing an entire row of plane seats.
O’Connor said: “On the flight home, when they said it was a full flight, I told my husband I was keeping the window seat so he’d have to sit in the middle or a stranger would. He started laughing and said, ‘It’s probably not actually full again, and I bet no one will sit with us if we ask them to sit with us.'”
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The video shows her husband gesturing towards a younger man wearing earphones who is walking past him. Rowland asks, “You wanna sit down?” The young man appears to mouth, “I’m all right,” as he walks past the husband. Rowland flashes a smile towards the camera, as laughter is heard in the background before the clip ends.
After coming to a halt following the COVID-19 pandemic, air travel has been returning to pre-pandemic levels. Some 2,658,057 passengers were reported to have passed through a U.S. Transport Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint, as of May 25, 2023, according to the agency. A March 2023 report by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) showed that total passenger traffic globally is “now at 84.2 percent of January 2019 levels.”
Overall traveler numbers were projected to reach 4 billion in 2024, exceeding pre-COVID-19 levels. This would amount to 103 percent of the total numbers in 2019, according to a March 2022 report from the IATA.
Southwest Airlines’ website says the company operates an “open seating” policy on its flights. It explains: “At Southwest, we let you sit where you like. We don’t assign seats on our flights, so feel free to sit in any available seat once you board the plane.”
O’Connor said, on the way to Florida, a flight attendant told them it was a full flight. However, after everyone had boarded, there were probably around 15 rows with empty middle seats. “We’ve had that happen before as well—where they say it’s a full flight, but it’s not actually all the way full,” O’Connor added.
On the flight to Florida, the attorney said she gave up her window seat and sat in the middle, so she would be seated next to her husband. But her neighbor kept giving her “dirty looks every time I looked out the window.”
So, on the flight heading back home, which they were told was full again, O’Connor told her husband that she would keep her window seat. He then invited strangers to sit next to him in a bid to keep the row free for the couple.
O’Connor said four passengers turned down her husband’s invitation to sit next to him before she grabbed her phone to start filming his antics.
O’Connor added the couple hadn’t tried this “method” of bagging a row before. They usually “just try not to make eye contact or look for the person we think we would want to be our neighbor.”
O’Connor said: “The flight we were on did happen to be completely full so we did have a neighbor. But I guess it worked because she saw what we were doing and thought it was hilarious. She ended up being a great flight neighbor with a great sense of humor that we got along with really well, and she sat in the middle seat.”
The latest video has left users on TikTok in stitches, with several sharing their own tips for bagging a full row on a seat.
John S Luby wrote: “I used to always get the barf bag out and open it…just stare at the bag and people walk on by!”
Julianne M posted: “My trick is to have your aisle seat person fall asleep. And the window seat person rummages frantically through their bag on the middle seat.”
Lynn Morrow commented: “Best trick is, as everyone is filing by, be slowly eating a big stinky burger with the middle seat open.”
Others wrote that they would have played along with the husband in the latest video.
Lee B posted: “I would’ve played his little game, kissed him and said thank you.”
The Lomeli Report commented: “knowing what he was trying to do. I’d say, sure I don’t mind sitting on your lap lol [laugh out loud] just to mess with him back haha.”
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