Airline: Southwest
Flight: DAL - LAG
Class: Economy
Does anyone have any advice for how to handle the following situation?
I took a flight with my wife and three kids recently. Two of these were lap children. My youngest was only three weeks old. Two hours into the flight, the flight attendant told us that one of us must move since there were only four oxygen masks in the row and we were five people. The flight was full and we were not told to pick different seats at boarding. She was indifferent to our problem and suggested we see if we can find another passenger to switch seats with one of us. Left with no other option, we asked another from women on the flight who we shared a mutual friend with to hold our newborn baby (we couldn't give her a squirming and wild 18-month-old). She was sitting about 20 feet in front of us.
During landing the baby woke up and yelled. My wife and I could not even get up to get him since they wouldn't let us get up. We had to listen to our brand-new newborn cry for 20 minutes. After the flight, I emailed Southwest telling them about the situation and the emotional distress that I, and especially my wife, experience by the flight attendance negligence in not telling us to rearrange our seats to begin with.
After a few days, Southwest responded with the following:
"Based on the information available to me, shortly after boarding and before taxi and takeoff, our Flight Attendants advised your family that both lap children would be unable to travel in the same row of seats as this would result in an insufficient number of oxygen masks in the event of an emergency. As the flight was not completely full, there were other seats available, and our Flight Attendants recall a Passenger offering to change seats so that you or your wife could sit with one of your lap children in a nearby row. However, the offer was declined, and you had a fellow Customer hold your child during the flight. When our Flight Attendants noticed during flight that both lap children were once again seated in the same row, they again advised that both lap children were unable to travel in the same row of seats. Our Flight Attendants recall that you again returned the child to the same fellow Customer for the duration of the flight."
This is basically all a lie. We were never told to switch seats before the flight. In fact, before the flight a flight attendant came over to us to instruct us on how to use the face masks on our children. The other "Customer," held our child once, and once only. Based on this false information, Southwest refused to compensate us in any way.
Does anyone have advice on how to deal with this?
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