First of all, thank you for your business. We really do appreciate it.

I am a Southwest flight attendant (over 20 years of service) who reads this forum on a regular basis and I joined just to address your post.

The Captain, unfortunately, put the flight attendants in a tough position. I am absolutely positive that this was not his intention just as I am sure that it was not the intention of the flight attendants to give you a hard time.

I understand that you did not "preboard" in the sense of needing extra time and/or assistance. I understand that you only boarded ahead of everyone else because you were invited to do so by the operations agent as a professional courtesy.

However, to everyone else in the gate area watching and waiting to board, especially the other Business Select Customers and those Customers who paid for earlier boarding positions, it appeared that someone boarded ahead of everyone else and ahead of the call for "general boarding" and took a seat in the exit row.

To everyone else watching and waiting to board, you "pre-boarded."

Now the flight attendant standing at the exit row will be the one possibly subjected to the disgruntled looks and comments from Customers who thought they saw a pre-boarder sit in one of the exit row seat they had been counting on. It may be the flight attendants who will have to respond to a complaint letter from a Business Select Customer who saw a pre-boarder take the seat they wanted in the exit row.

Unfortunately, "the Captain said it was okay," or "he's a pilot so we let him board early to take whatever seat he wants," is probably not going to go over too well with the Customers who have also paid good money to be in the first group to board or those who have earned that boarding position due to their continued loyalty to our Company. Furthermore, those explanations will also probably not go over too well with In-flight Management should a formal complaint letter be sent in.

While it was nice of the Operations Agent to let you board early ahead of everyone else and nice of the Captain to tell you that it was okay to sit in the exit row, it truly put the flight attendants in a bad position.

I hope this explains a little of the perspective from our side of the flight deck door and again, thank you for your business.