New Changes at Southwest

The day of your trip has finally arrived. Everything had been planned well in advance, and you cannot wait to start your much deserved vacation. Your printer is broken, so you cannot check in online and print your boarding pass, but that is a minor concern. You are getting to the airport plenty early, and you are sure it will not be a big deal. You arrive at the airport, print your boarding pass at the Southwest kiosk, check your luggage, make it through security and find your gate. Everything seems to be going well...until you notice the line campers. Yes the line campers. If you have ever flown Southwest, you know exactly what I mean. It is well over an hour before the plane will even ready to board, and you have people staking a claim to their spot in line and ultimately their place in line. Since you checked in at the airport, you are in Boarding Class B. This isn't a huge issue, but then you begin to notice that the Class B line is steadily growing. Soon it becomes apparent that you will need to get in line soon, or you will be in a less than ideal seat. You get in line a little under an hour before the plane is scheduled to take off. After about twenty minutes, you realize you need to use the little girls/boys room. The issue is you are traveling alone. Yeah, so if you get out of line, you will lose your place. It isn't too much longer, so you just decide to wait. Then they come over the loud speaker and say that the plane is delayed by a few minutes, so boarding probably be delayed by ten or fifteen minutes. Okay fine, you are still good. Well ten or fifteen quickly becomes twenty, and you are not sure how much longer you are going to last.

Finally they announce that your plane is boarding. First we have the preboards. You do not usually have an issue with the preboarding people, but you realize that whole families of eight are preboarding with just one young child. You see other families preboarding with eight year olds. Okay mildly annoying. Then you wait on Boarding Class A, and finally it is your turn. By the time you waddle onto the plane, you are glad that the lavatory is at the back of the plane because that is where the only open isle seats are located. Yes you will be dumping off your carry on into the last open isle seat on the whole plane and making a beeline for said lavatory. Now you are stressed out, and you are pretty much exhausted. This is not a way to start out any vacation. However, this is exactly how I started my recent trip to Las Vegas.

Don't get me wrong, once I got used to how the airline worked, I became a fan of Southwest Airlines. I of course love their low prices, their great customer service, usually great flight crews. However, my biggest gripe had always been the whole "cattle call" mentality. I really did not care that I didn't have an assigned seat. I like being able to pick my own seat, and I think (with the appropriate guidance from the flight crew) it saves time in the boarding process. My biggest issue was wit the line campers. Seriously folks, I shouldn't have to fight for a place in line. I knew that Southwest was testing a new seating policy in San Antonio in August, and when I spoke to Linda Rutherford, Southwest's Vice President of Public relations and Community Affairs, earlier this month, she told me to be on the look out for changes. The changes have come. The tested policy is going live starting next week (although according to the Southwest website the policy will not be fully implemented at all airports until November) and I think it is a positive step.

The policy basically states that there will still be boarding classes A, B and C. The change is that you will also be assigned a position within that group. Yes, you will be given your place in line. You still get to choose your own seat, but there is no longer the fight for a place in line. This seems to make sense to me, and to many other dedicated Southwest customers. However, not everyone is as pleased. There are some people who are very much against the changes. Of course the line campers are not happy. They have been able to plot and bully in some cases to get preferred seating for ages, now that might be coming to an end.

The other complaints stem from the changes to the preboarding changes. Traditional preboarding still in place for passengers with disabilities and unaccompanied minors between five and eleven. However, adults traveling with a child (r children) under the age of five, will no longer be able to preboard. Unless you have are in boarding class A, you will now board between Boarding Class A and B. This has caused some major drama between parent's and childless passengers. As a childless passenger, I will be the first to admit I have been annoyed by the previously lax preboarding policy. Okay, so does your WHOLE party of ten have to preboard for just one three-year-old. No, I would not want your three-year-old to sit alone, but really does your whole family have to board with you? I have seen accompanied children well over the age of five in the preboarding line as well. I am hopeful that this new policy will help Southwest enforce the age limits. I of course do not want a child to have to sit alone. I would love a perfect world where all families can sit together, but it doesn't always happen. It doesn't matter what airline you fly. I think if Southwest is smart about the policy, there should not be too much drama. If the flight crew is aware of a parent and child that needs to sit together, they can help that pair find seats together. I am thinking that if asked nicely many people would be more that glad to move or be accommodating for families. That is in Southwest's court. If they take a "well we can't help you" approach that would be another story.

The other part of the argument is another can of worms. Plus I don't really think it is part of the whole seating policy issue. Yes I have been on a plane with the devil spawn child kicking my seat, pulling my hair, and throwing one hellacious temper tantrum from point A to Point B. At the same time, I have been on planes with much better behaved children. Were they perfect? No. Did they get a little fussy at times? Sure? I think this has very little to do with the policy and more to do with basic common courtesy. If your children are out of control, it really doesn't matter when you board the plane. Whoever has the bad fortune of sitting next to you will be miserable. I read one comment where a mother claimed she needed to not wait in line because she needed to have her toddler run around the gate area to wear herself out. I can see and understand that, but I have also read comments where another parent insisted that simply teaching the child how to behave in public would be sufficient.

I really hope this works for Southwest. I think the changes will be positive. Yes, I do think some tweaking of the policy may be on the horizon. All new processes need some refining. Hopefully these changes will make flying Southwest even more enjoyable and more profitable for the airline.