Why I paid $20 for a seat on JetBlue this morning

I hate paying for extras when I travel. To avoid the wireless fee at certain airports I have a free 4G hotspot. To avoid baggage fees I have a credit card or status with every airline I fly. To avoid fees for airport lounges I have the Amex Platinum. But today, anathema to everything I stand for, I purchased a $20 Even More Space seat on JetBlue.

Here are some facts about JetBlue:

1. I can’t stand flying them
1. They’re in the bad terminal at DCA
2. They’re in the bad terminal at BOS
3. Their customer service quality varies way too much
4. They don’t have PreCheck anywhere (apparently that is changing in the future)
5. They don’t partner with any airlines I want to use their points on
6. They don’t fly anywhere besides Boston that I want to go
7. They are consistently more delayed on the routes I fly than their competitors

2. They board their elites first, and then they board the rest of the plane back to front

So why am I flying JetBlue in the first place? And why am I paying them even more money to get a different seat? Well, it turns out that JetBlue is consistently cheaper between Washington and Boston than US Airways. So that answers why I fly them. What about the seat thing though?

I’ve taken the 640am to Dulles or Reagan a number of times on Monday mornings. The flight is always pretty full, and by the time the back rows get boarded there is no more overhead space. Since my first JetBlue flight, when I discovered that sitting in the back gives you a way better chance of putting your bag overhead, I’ve always been careful to pick a seat towards the back, somewhere around row 15 on their Embraer planes. Not so far back that it'll take forever to get off the plane, but also not so far up that I won't get my bag overhead. Goldilocks.

Last night when I checked in, I was surprised to find that I had picked row 4. Not only that, but the rest of the plane was full and I couldn’t switch seats. I was definitely going to have to gate-check my bag.

If I was flying into Reagan and the flight was at 6 instead of 640, I might have been fine with this. Reagan is a small airport where you can quickly get your checked bags from the baggage claim, and landing at 730 or 8 I am just fine waiting 20 minutes before heading to the office. But flying into Dulles at 640 is another story. The flight lands at 820, meaning if I’m on time I have 40 minutes to make a 20-minute trip to the office. Add on the 10-15 minutes it takes to get out of the uncomprehensively massive monstrosity (albeit a beautiful monstrosity) that is Dulles airport, and you can see how close that is cutting it. Plus, this flight never seems to be on time when I’m on it. Plus plus, bags take forever to arrive at Dulles. I don't fault JetBlue for that. If the people have to travel a couple miles to get out, I can't imagine how far the bags have to go.

I decided since there were no open seats available in the back of the plane that I would purchase an Even More Space seat at the airport the next morning. These seats are the exit rows and the bulkhead row on the Embraer jets, meaning they’re a bit more spacious (as the name indicates) and I could more easily get an hour of sleep in on this very early flight. Just as importantly, it meant I could board before everyone else.

I got in a nice nap. My bag went overhead no problem. The front of the plane did have to check their bags. And my flight was 10 minutes late. Best $20 I ever spent on a seat.