Southwest Airlines Community

I am one of those "chosen few" who received the promise of a guaranteed A spot in your boarding process because of the amount of trips that I fly on Southwest. I average one to two round-trips per week on your airline; thus I assume that I am one of those "road warriors" to whom you are now attempting to pander with your new boarding system. That being said, I find your latest attempt at squeezing some more dollars out of your favored customers to be nothing short of reprehensible. There are those business travellers who understand that their company is trying to save as much money on expenses as Southwest seems bent on extracting that money by creating classes of boarders, not passengers. To me, paying an artificially high fare which is passed on to our company under the guise of a business expense just for the privalige of boarding earlier is nothing short of asking business travellers to steal from their employer. Other airlines of course have different classes of tickets, and with that purchase comes ceratin supposed amenities, be it larger seats, meal service, or just a certain distance from the obligatory screaming child that some people seem to feel empowered to share with their fellow passengers - for some people these amenities are worth the extra price. But Southwest offers no such amenities - one would have to go to only the most upscale hotel to be willing to pay $30 for a single drink as you now offer. And as I have experienced over the years, even early boarding does not guarantee a passenger any more privacy or comfort than any other patron who boards later...I can be the absolute first to board and still end up sitting next to a 300-pounder in a center seat who spends the trip spilling into my side - the only thing that I am guaranteed with an A or B boarding pass is overhead bin space. So while I do applaud the changing of how families and other "assisted passengers" now load (as was pointed out in another posting, too many people abused this policy and putting them in-between the A & B groups still guarantees them the chance to sit together), and while I appreciate the promise of being guaranteed an "A" boarding pass (that is, unless you sell all of the A's to higher-paying customers), I refuse to play Southwest's new game of "pass the costs on to the boss" and will not be participating in your little experiment at revenue improvement. I thank you for my 15+ years of weekly round trips, but after my current group of pre-paid reservations runs out, I will be giving my business and my company's weekly business to another airline where I can see an actual return on my flying dollar. Congratulations on doing more to prop up your competitors' bottom line than they could have ever done on their own. ... View more