The complaint that most parents have had - particularly the ones with small children - is not that they need favorable treatment but that they need to be able to sit together. Even the most blinkered, selfish single traveller should understand that parents will not fly SWA if they cannot be sure that they will be able to sit with their small kids.
Southwest has never offered assigned seats, but did at least let families pre-board. This was the only way a parent with a child could guarantee that they could sit together, and in the case of a child with a car seat, guarantee the window seat that the law insists that they have.
The Business Select announcement yesterday finally confirmed what many posters here have suspected. That Southwest is putting the additional money from its business travellers before the interests of, and courtesy for, its family fliers.
I'm sure it will be a commercial success and one day we'll all look back and laugh at the naive old days when South West portrayed itself as different from the rest, a family friendly airline with a focus on simple, good ol' fashioned service.
As a frequent business traveller I would never fly anyway with an airline that didn't allow me to assign a seat ahead of time, and now I won't be travelling with my family for vacations on that airline either. But I guess I must be in a minority as I'm sure SWA has done its homework.
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Sara,
This problem is caused completely by Southwest's open seating policy. If you are going to offer open seating then you need to offer courtesy or priority boarding to those that have legitimate reasons to need to sit together, or those that genuinely need extra time to get seating before the cattle drive starts.
By offering families the opportunity to board after the "A" ticketed passengers but before the "B" ones, then Southwest has at least recognised this, but all they are now doing - by letting the "A's" get on first - is pandering to the whiners that believe they should be able to get on board first simply because they were first to login to their computer 23 hours and 59 minutes before the flight.
There are many other posts that explain why this is impractical and in some cases (car seats needing to be in window seats by law) really unenforceable. In fact the policy will achieve for these "A" ticketed passengers the exact opposite of what they really want - which is to choose a seat that is further away from children, rather than to be forced to sit next to one which will now begin to happen as families take up available seats rather than ones out of the way of other passengers.
As I see it there are three ways that Southwest can go forward.
1. Offer pre-assigned seating and clearly this is not going to happen;
2. Continue with the current policy which will mean that many families such as mine simply don't fly with the airline from now on because of the worry of not being able to travel together; or
3. Go back to the old system for pre-boarding but make changes to ensure that the policy is stricter on who may pre-board and that the pre-board seats are at the back and out of the way so the "A" list get their precious seats at the front.
Yes the point is to get from A to B safely and in one piece, but also with a minimum of stress and in a manner befitting a human being rather than a cow.
Thanks for the opportunity to vent.
Mark
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Another dissatisfied family I'm afraid. We have children aged 6,3 and a baby. No way am I going to fly with an airline that cannot guarantee we can sit together either by getting on first and getting out of everyone's way, or by having pre-assigned seats. Shame, as you fly where we want to go, and we've always found the service convenient.
I'd much rather you focused on the fake wheelchair brigade. On a recent flight from MCO to MHT a wheelchair-bound flyer got on in front of my family, and immediately "saved" seven seats for traveling companions. Upon arrival in Manchester the diabled passenger suddenly and miraculously found that he could walk again and he and his companions left the plane first.
No one from SWA batted an eyelid but hopefully my comments to the guy at the baggage carousel would have made him reconsider such selfish behaviour in the future.
Make them all sit at the back of the plane and get off last. Then you'd see how many are really disabled. (I'd be happy to do that with my family in case you ask to avoid holding everyone up).
From now on I'm happy to fly with another airline. This move makes you just the same as them anyway.
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