A Personal Wheelchair User's Experience Flying Southwest Airlines with Assigned Seats

SMF-AUS-MCI

May 9, 2026

MCI-PHX-SMF

May 15, 2026

 

Kellisa flew four segments last week on Southwest Airlines. This was her first trip since Southwest changed their seating policy to assigned seats. Kellisa has flown Southwest almost exclusively over the past 20 years. The only exceptions were trips to Hawaii and Alaska before Southwest started flying to the 49th and 50th states and one trip to Billings.

"A Day of Flights"

9 years ago...1/3 of Kellisa's life has gone by since we gave her the present of "A Day of Flights." May 16, 2017 was one of the greatest days of Kellisa’s life and I haven't been able to come up with a better birthday celebration, despite many hours of racking my brain.

After many months of planning and finally pulling off the day better than I dreamed, I was struggling to post about it. Thankfully, Lisa came to the rescue and for the first time in this blog's history, Lisa has written a post and it captures the day and our gift of flights to Kellisa for her birthday better than I could have ever done. *This is also by far the most popular post on our little blog.

North American Travel Journalists Association - May 2026 Featured Member

Click on the picture to read the brief interview.

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"Accessible doesn't always mean ADA compliant"

 

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A Wheelchair Accessibility Guide to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park

Three years ago, Kellisa and I had a week open for adventure. We decided to spend our time down in the Palm Springs area to explore some new areas while making a return visit to Joshua Tree National Park. Thanks to COVID, this would be Kellisa's first flight in 50 months, by far the longest she ever went without being on an airplane. 

We had such a great time, we thought we would share our guide to the Palm Springs region again for our readers.