You’re App-solutely going to love this news!

[tfinley]

The holiday season always gets me a little nostalgic.  So, please indulge me as I take a quick stroll down mobile memory lane.  In 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the world changing our idea of a smartphone forever.  That same year Southwest launched a mobile version of southwest.com. Then in 2009, we were the first U.S. airline to launch an iPhone app.  The next year, Samsung released their first Galaxy S phone, and we followed with our Android and Blackberry app.  Time moves quickly in our mobile world.  Now, each month over one million Customers check in for their Southwest flight on a mobile phone. Today is an exciting day for both our Customers and Employees because we’re rolling out an all new Southwest mobile web site and app for iPhone and Android.   We took all of the same features from our old app and completely redesigned it to give everyone a better, more consistent experience. Plus we added some new features along the way, including:

• Persistent menu for quicker navigation throughout the app
• Contextual links to intuitively move from task to task
• Airport information content pages
• Non-logged in users can now view reservations
• Ability for mixed adult + senior bookings
• Showing the number of Rapid Rewards points earned while purchasing

With this complete redesign, we’re also excited to announce the rollout of our mobile boarding pass pilot launching in Austin on November 21.   We’ll continue to rollout to other cities across our network throughout 2014, but for now we’re starting with single Passengers on nonstop and direct flights originating from Austin. Customers will be able to request a mobile boarding pass at the time of checkin on southwest.com, mobile.southwest.com, or using our new app.  Customers can choose one of three delivery methods: view in browser, send to smartphone via e-mail, or send via text message.  For all of you Passbook users, hang tight.  We’ll be adding the ability to save boarding passes to Apple Passbook in the very near future. Most importantly, we’re not stopping here.  We already have a list of improvements and features we want to add to the app and make available on our mobile website.  We’re listening to Customer feedback on social media and in the app stores.  And we’ve already started on our next release to continue enhancing our mobile experience.  We can’t wait to share what we’re up to next! To learn more and download the mobile app, visit here: www.southwest.com/mobile. To learn more about mobile boarding pass, visit here: www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/airport-experience/mobile-boarding-pass.html.