I'm not usually one to encourage lawsuits in our overly litigious society, but I'm all for Southwest seeking to stop these fly-by-night firms such as BoardFirst exploit a well-designed policy for profit. It is a violation of SWA's terms. The right to create and enforce ticketing policies is theirs and theirs alone. Aside from the intellectual property issue, there are more practical reasons why this behavior should be discouraged.
This stratification of different "classes" is a bad trend, and should not be allowed to "infect" Southwest. One reason why SWA's competitors have such a high cost overhead (and why SWA is cheaper) is because they have to manage these different classes, assigned seating, etc. Southwest embodies the model of simplicity (a single model plane for their entire fleet; one class of passenger, no assigned seats, etc.) If these "hanger-on" companies are allowed to continue, it will in essence create the same stratified situation for Southwest, in which some passengers become a "permanent A class". This would ruin the elegance (and possibly screw up the pricing model) of the current model.
If you want to pay more for an assigned seat, fly another airline.
To the management at Southwest, I say, "RELEASE THE HOUNDS!"
P.S. SET LOVE FREE!
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