gary:
you don't get it!! it's simple, but it's not about preassigned seating.
1. take care of your mfu's --------if it's about meritocracy vs aristocracy, then it's about what you do for your "most frequent users" ( your "mfu's"). for those of us who fly you a lot--and i mean a lot, i.e. companion passes, literally hundreds and hundreds of rapid rewards credits, etc. these folks are your economic backbone, and it's about what you do to keep and grow their flying usage and that of their families.
you need to make every one of your mfu's experiences in every airport as easy and quick and bearable as it can possibly be.
you need to give your mfu's priority check-in/kisok lines.
you need to get your mfu's priority through the airport security lines where every other airline's "first class" passengers are getting priority, and then,
whatever your seating plan is, you need to take care of your mfu's by putting them automatically in your top boarding group (or give them an "AA" boarding group --sorry wrong air line-- or an "I M Certifiably Nuts" group of their own) whenever they check in ---even if it's 10 mins before boarding time.
you also need to seek out input from your mfu's---not just every vocal idiot who decides to try and criticize your airline once a year and threatens to move $1.98 in business at the drop of a hat. your mfu's can and will tell you candidly what is right and what is wrong about swa from the customer perspective.
2. there is a big issue about pre-boarding, but it's not about families with young kids.
our kids are grown adults, yet we recognize all of the very important reasons voiced in the earlier blogs about why families w/ kids need to pre-board. those reasons are all valid, and they should pre-board.
the problem w/ pre-boards is all the non-sense that we and your other mfu's see time and again when blatant abusers with tennis racquets, and mtn climbing gear in hand jaunt merrily onto the plane ahead of everyone else with a bogus pink or yellow piece of paper granting them priority for some feigned disability. (we also experience folks with genuine disabilities who refuse the privilege of pre-boarding.)
the resentment of those experiences is exceeded only by those where an apparently genuinely frail elder or disabled person is pre-boarded while accompanied onto a flight by a healthy entourage that's larger in number that that which accompanies michael jackson or your average rock band or presidential candidate.
let the families pre-board ---but stop the abuses. they're incredible in number, and your/our swa attendants are too polite and never challenge them.
gary: let's go for it! stretch the envelope! you have great employees (we really luv their collective sense of humor) and great market appeal. AND you obviously have GREAT Customer Loyalty........but we are smart and we are fickle..................SWA......like every other business today.....has to earn that loyalty everyday. Thanks for listening/reading.... j
... View more