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I'm a very tall man (6'4") and always have trouble with a lack of legroom on flights (even JetBlue). A few years ago I was adventurous, and frustrated -- there
by LogicX 15y ago
I'm a very tall man (6'4") and always have trouble with a lack of legroom on flights (even JetBlue).
A few years ago I was adventurous, and frustrated -- there were no seats left on the flight that it would let me reserve online. Yet for this particular airline, it showed that the exit row seats were available, but clicking on them lead to an alert that you could not book them online: You had to do so at the airport.
I decided to look at the code making the seat selection calls, submitted my seat selection for that seat anyway -- and wallah! I was granted a ticket with that exit row seat. Had no problem going through security or boarding.
Haven't tried it since - as most airlines now charge extra for those seats, and its not such an easy hack.
- 6ren 15y agoAt first I thought "wallah!" was a phonetic misspelling of voilà http://www.thefreedictionary.com/voila http://www.thefreedictionary.com/voila , but now I see it apparently is an arabic oath meaning "by Allah!" http://www.google.com.au/search?q=wallah http://www.google.com.au/search?q=wallah (though the wikipedia article suspiciously cites no sources... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallah_(Arabic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallah_(Arabic) )
- abdulhaq 15y agowallah does indeed mean 'By God!' in arabic but it's used as an assertion of veracity. In this context the poster obviously meant to say voila and like you I've also seen this wallah variation of it creeping in recently.
- 6ren 15y agoRetro-validation appeals to me, so it could be interpreted as: and - truly, I swear by God I am not making this up - I was granted a ticket with that exit row seat In English, it's an old-fashioned idiom that a Robert Louis Stevenson character might have used. But English-speakers tend not to swear by God much these days - indeed, "swearing" usually means profanity.
- MichaelApproved 15y agoMy parents are Middle Eastern Jews from Iran and Iraq and my understanding of their use of wallah is to mean "for real?" or "surprisingly so!"
- abdulhaq 15y agoYes it means that too but deriving from the sense I mentioned, i.e. asking if the person making the assertion would swear to it 'by God'.
- biot 15y agoThe French pronunciation of voila is akin to "fwalla", with the f/v sound being relatively subtle. At any rate it's not as amusing as misspelling it as viola.
- yardie 15y agoExit row seats are special in that the ground crew need to see that you are physically capable of operating the door. If you were handicapped in anyway, and I've seen people request so they have more space for their oxygen bottle, the cabin crew would have to move you to a different seat. On a full flight it can be tough to play musical chairs.
- LogicX 15y agoWow - didn't realize this thread would turn into a dissection of my use of 'Wallah' -- which I didn't even consciously realize I use (nor what it really meant to the degree analyzed here). You learn something new every day. Thanks HN!