11-08-2007
05:49 PM
1 Love
Good Morning...
I thought I would give you a bit of history on why we decided to make changes to our preboard policy when it comes to families. Over the years, we've noticed that the number of families traveling continues to grow, and so did our Preboard group. At times, we would have flights that would be halfway boarded with family preboards by the time we began our A boarding. Through research and surveys, we discovered that families aren't necessarily concerned with the section of the aircraft they are sitting, as long as they have seats together. Through that same research, we confirmed that our business travelers are under more of a time crunch when traveling and sitting in the front of the plane is important to them. With families boarding before the As, most of those front seats were taken by the time our A group or business travelers were boarded. The new boarding procedure gives our A passenger a larger seat selection and at the same time, allows our families to find seats together. Now, I know that does not help in situations, like yours AJ, of having a screaming, seat kicker plop down behind you but I'm hoping this is not a common occurrence. In fact, most of the time we've noticed that with the new boarding system the A's fill up the front of the aircraft and the family passengers move to the rear of the plane...closer to the restrooms which is a bonus for those travelling with small ones. Hope this answers some of the above questions and concerns!
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11-08-2007
01:18 AM
1 Love
Well John - San Diego and San Antonio are lovely destinations...but that's not the reason we chose to do our boarding tests in those cities. Both San Diego and San Antonio have a good mix of passenger "types" and a wide variety of destinations and flight lengths. There was a lot of criteria that went into making those two city choices but I can promise you that we did more research outside of those cities as well.
I also wanted to point out that you don't have to be a high paying Customer to get into the A-List. You can purchase 16 roudtrip "Wanna Get Away" fares in a 12-month time period and get A-List status. On many carriers you would probably have to pay much more in that same period of time to be awarded a similar perk.
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11-08-2007
12:25 AM
1 Love
The new fare structure will be available tomorrow...in fact I think it will officially be online at 3:00 a.m. for any of you late owls (or very early birds) out there. All I can say is, please be patient with us. We are working very hard to enhance our product to bring ALL of our Customers more value and an even better experience. I know that sounds like marketing jargon but I can promise you that these changes have not been made lightly and are the result of many, many months of debate and Customer research. If you had a chance to see part of Gary's press conference today, then you know he said - several times - that we will continue to improve and find ways to bring even more value to our fare structure and Rapid Rewards program over the next several months. As Colleen always says, "We're in the People business, we just happen to fly planes." That will never change.
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11-07-2007
10:08 PM
1 Love
Hi Dennis. Thanks for your comment. We feel like the enhancements we made to Rapid Rewards today actually improve the value of the program. We are trying to find ways to reward and thank our most frequent travelers and give our members who are trying to book award travel more choices and flexibility. With as much as you say you fly, you'll be the perfect candidate to take advantage of some of these benefits. We have heard from Customers just like you that are upset about our restricted award seats so this annoucement today is our way of finding a win-win for both our frequent travelers (such as yourself) and Southwest.
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