I can't tell you how frustrated I am that this new "no family pre-boarding" announcement was made AFTER I booked my holiday reservations. Had I known this, I would certainly have selected a different carrier. You really should consider postponing the roll-out until after flights booked prior to the announcement have been completed.
As other posters have mentioned, travelling with a toddler is incredibly stressful. My kid is actually quite well behaved and I am a strong disciplinarian, but throw any 2-year-old into a foreign situation with tons of strangers in tight quarters and then force them to remain seated for several hours at a time? Forget about it. Even the most well behaved children can become screaming hellions under these circumstances. You cannot reason with a 2-year-old. Whether a BABY or TODDLER will act up on a flight is a total crap shoot and quite frequently has NOTHING to do with discipline or a lack thereof.
And about the lateness? Last Christmas--flying Southwest--we BARELY made the preboarding... yet we had arrived at the airport 3 HOURS before our flight. Getting through security with a 1-year-old, a stroller, and an enormous carseat proved to be ridiculously time consuming, due to no fault of our own. It is extremely presumptuous to assume that every family arriving in the "nick of time" is doing so because they're incompetent.
At the very least, families who plan to install CARSEATS on the plane should still be allowed to board first. I can't wait to see what kind of bottleneck my son and I will create as we stand in the aisle while my husband occupies nearly an entire row for 5+ minutes trying to get that thing strapped in. You are kidding yourselves if you think this isn't going to be an issue. I am seriously DREADING the prospect of flying SWA this Christmas.
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