A traveler paid $300 for extra legroom on Southwest, then found every one of those seats was somehow unavailable

A Southwest Airlines passenger says she ran into a booking discrepancy while trying to fly from Kansas City to New York. As detailed by BroBible, a TikTok user named Nicole shared her experience in a video that has drawn more than 112,000 views. Nicole said she tried to upgrade to a Choice Extra fare, which advertises extra legroom and two free checked bags, only to find that the seats she was paying for showed as unavailable.

According to Nicole, after she selected the Choice Extra option to secure additional legroom, the seat map displayed those seats as unavailable, though she said they were not actually full. When she switched to the cheaper Choice Preferred option, the same extra-legroom seats appeared on the map, but only with an added fee tacked on top of the fare.

Nicole said in the video, “I chose Choice Extra, to change my flight, $300, mainly extra legroom.” She said this is why she does not book Southwest and called it her last flight with the airline. She also noted that the Choice Extra fare includes two free checked bags, which the Choice Preferred option does not, meaning the total cost gap widens once baggage fees are factored in.

Other travelers say they’ve run into the same seat problem

Several people said on Reddit that they experienced the same seat availability issue when switching between fare tiers on Southwest’s booking site. Some suggested that booking the fare and then selecting “modify seat” could unlock the extra-legroom seats without the added charge, though Southwest has not confirmed this as an intended process.

The frustration also comes amid a broader wave of airline pricing complaints on social media, including a recent American Airlines first-class complaint that drew similar attention online. Southwest introduced a new Basic fare in May 2025, positioned below its standard Choice fare, which includes benefits like same-day confirmed changes, same-day standby, and transferable flight credits.

Choice Preferred and Choice Extra sit above the standard tier and add perks such as priority boarding and express lane access, with Choice Extra also including extra-legroom seating. Other passengers have described paying for front-row, extra-legroom seats only to be boarded late and told to store their bags at the back of the plane, while another traveler said they bought an assigned seat only to be bumped to standby the day before their flight.

One person also described using a Southwest credit card to select seats 48 hours in advance, only to end up with middle seats that separated a family of five while other paid seats nearby stayed empty. A cruise line saw a similar pricing complaint go viral recently, when a customer publicly pushed back over a prepaid cruise gratuities dispute after declining to pay upfront tipping charges.

One commenter summed up frustration with Southwest’s changes, writing, “I flew SWA religiously because of the general seating and two free bags.” They said that once those benefits were removed, they stopped flying with the airline. Choice Extra currently earns 14 Rapid Rewards points per dollar spent, compared to 10 points per dollar on Choice Preferred.

Southwest has not publicly commented on the reported seat map discrepancy.