SWA Adds Boarding Fee

who the hell wants to sit on the plane LONGER?

i never understood the appeal of boarding as quick as possible.

im always just sitting my a nice, roomy, open lobby until the very last people are at the door, then i walk up, walk in, sit down.

why get cramped earlier?? :dunno:
 
who the hell wants to sit on the plane LONGER?

i never understood the appeal of boarding as quick as possible.

im always just sitting my a nice, roomy, open lobby until the very last people are at the door, then i walk up, walk in, sit down.

why get cramped earlier?? :dunno:

Well you could get a seat at the front of the plane and ensure that you get off sooner. I think more than anything people want to try to avoid getting stuck in a middle seat. For a long transcon trip, it's well worth $10 to avoid.
 
This is interesting.

It's selling preferential boarding, aka First Class or preferred traveler type perks.. to pad ticket prices.

Is Southwest in fact becoming like everybody else?
 
Now when people complain about baggage fee on Delta and how that Southwest don't charge anything. I can now say they start charging for pre boarding.:)
 
This isn't exactly new - they had a business elite thing where you could add $20 to the price of the ticket, be guaranteed A 1-15 and you also got double points for your flight segment. I hope that plan is still in place - I am afraid they charge too little to pre-board and the rable will take advantage. Plus...it is a way to set yourself apart from the herd.

See...SWA is like socialism...everyone is equal...so I enjoyed being able to show my financial superiority and lord it over the other losers on Southwest. Of course, it is a little bit like being the valedictorian of summer school, but still.
 
who the hell wants to sit on the plane LONGER?

i never understood the appeal of boarding as quick as possible.

im always just sitting my a nice, roomy, open lobby until the very last people are at the door, then i walk up, walk in, sit down.

why get cramped earlier?? :dunno:
With Southwest you do it not to get the middle seats. With carriers like UA, people want to get on board ASAP so they don't have to gate check their stuff. When you gate check something on mainline UA and you're going to a hub, it RARELY gets put on your connecting flight. It usually ends up in the hubs bag room and doesn't have your name anywhere on it more likely than not. Not sure if WN does the same thing, but I wouldn't imagine the 737 can handle every passenger bringing a carry-on onboard.
 
I also like being one of the last on the plane so it is more get in and go. But a disadvantage is having to place your bag in an overhead 20 seats back, then fighting your way back up to your seat.
 
I also like being one of the last on the plane so it is more get in and go. But a disadvantage is having to place your bag in an overhead 20 seats back, then fighting your way back up to your seat.
Thats all well and fine until you need to get off the plane and your in row 5 and your bag is in row 19 and you need to wait until almost everyone else is off the plane until you can even get out of your seat and get the bag.
 
Always getting the middle seat sucks but by then I'm usually just glad I have a seat to get where I'm going. Comes with the territory flying on standby passes.
 
The people who pay the $10.00 fee will board after Business Select and after A-List passengers. So it is not exactly a "pre-board". They will still have to stand in line, but will just buy their way into A-30 through A-60 spots instead of getting to online check-in 1 hour after it opens and being C-20. I think it is clever actually.
 
With carriers like UA, people want to get on board ASAP so they don't have to gate check their stuff. When you gate check something on mainline UA and you're going to a hub, it RARELY gets put on your connecting flight. It usually ends up in the hubs bag room and doesn't have your name anywhere on it more likely than not. Not sure if WN does the same thing, but I wouldn't imagine the 737 can handle every passenger bringing a carry-on onboard.

I ended up going BOS-IAH-TPA a couple weeks back, and of course being standby I was the last on, but CO at least in BOS has thermal bag tag printers at the gate podium, rather than hand writing tags, that always seemed to not go to the right place. At least now they look like a regular checked bag, and for the record both of our bags made the 30 minute connection. I thought it was pretty slick.
 
The people who pay the $10.00 fee will board after Business Select and after A-List passengers. So it is not exactly a "pre-board". They will still have to stand in line, but will just buy their way into A-30 through A-60 spots instead of getting to online check-in 1 hour after it opens and being C-20. I think it is clever actually.

Right on! Gladly spend that money.
 
SWA is just another airline.... At the end of the day. Its a matter of time until they start charging for bags etc.... :) If paxs would just look at the fare and compare they would find a lot of times SWA is not the best option.... However they arent affraid to spend money to run commercials and get there name out there... :)
 
SWA is just another airline.... At the end of the day. Its a matter of time until they start charging for bags etc.... :) If paxs would just look at the fare and compare they would find a lot of times SWA is not the best option.... However they arent affraid to spend money to run commercials and get there name out there... :)

They have excellent marketing, good customer service, and hard working employees (the vast majority) who appear happy to be working for them. They are still leaps and bounds above many airlines because of it.

I still believe that mainlines contracting their products out to other carriers is the reason that they can't compete with SWA. The more contracted flying they have, the worse customer service gets it seems.
 
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