Dear SWA -- LUV your airline -- I recently switched from a job which required me to fly almost every week, and even though it sometimes took some driving, I always flew SW if at all possible. I could not have kept that job as long as I did if I had had to fly the "conventional" airlines with their unpleasant employees and their nerve-racking "hub" system (would I make my connection? would my *luggage* make my connection??).
Also, due to your reasonable fares, I was able to save my company so much money on my trips that I usually could stay over the weekend -- I got to visit *lots* of fun places that way! And if I was worn out after a week of hard work, and my last meeting ended early, I could usually get on an earlier plane (for no fee!) and sleep in my own bed at home.
Now that I'm looking for a place to retire, I'm actually considering the availability of SWA service as one of the (admittedly minor) considerations.
One of the wonderful things about SW, IMHO, is the open seating --please keep it! I'm guessing it's one of the reasons you don't have to charge for changes to reservations, because you don't have to scramble around and update seat assignments.
Yes, now that SW is not the US airline industry's best-kept secret 🙂 there are problems with rude people cutting in line, etc. And yes, having to stand in line (or sit on the floor) for an hour is a bit of a nuisance. So why not remodel the gate areas so that there are A, B, and C chairs? Number the seats -- as a passenger arrives in the gate area, he/she would go to his/her area (A, B, or C) and sit in the next seat. Or at least mark out the gate area so that the lines are more obvious -- use roping, or different colored carpet on the floor -- and have 3 signs to give to passengers -- "I am the end of the A line" "I am the end of the B line" etc. As the lines fill up, the sign would be passed to the person at the end of each line. It would make it harder for people to pretend they didn't know where the end of the line is ...
Hoping to be flying in your (unassigned) seats for many more years to come --
Gillian Durham
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