First thing's first: I would like to commend Fred Taylor on a job quite obviously well done. I was recently on the receiving end of his efforts, unexpectedly finding a letter and LUV voucher in the mail not long after going through a bit of a weather-related ordeal en route from Baltimore/Washington to Providence, RI. The sequence of events that travel day were unfortunate, but not exceptional, given the conditions - and certainly not something I would hold Southwest accountable for (in the end, we eventually made it to our destination - something that other airlines flying the very same route that night were not capable of doing). I certainly did not expect Southwest to go out of their way to compensate me for something that was so obviously out of their control, but Fred did just that, and in doing so rekindled my beliefs that Southwest was different.
Thanks, Fred.
I would like to address one other aspect of my travel experience that day (and on the various other legs of that trip which I flew with Southwest), a subject that seems to have already inspired some opinions in the comments above: the boarding process. Admittedly, this is the first time I've flown Southwest in some time, and what I recalled from the past was a unique free-for-all boarding process where everyone had a shot at taking a seat wherever they pleased. From what I could remember, it seemed like a fun way to go about it. Perhaps my memory fails me, though, because the boarding processes during my last trip were anything but fun.
Starting at the boarding gate, it seemed there was an air of tension around the entire process. People were jockeying for position, questioning those ahead and behind them to see if they were in the right spot numerically. It seemed to put people on edge from the get-go. I was appalled to witness a grown, well-to-do businessman get in my partner's face, seething with hostility, to yell at her about how the number order didn't really matter - after she had simply informed him that he wasn't standing in the correct section. It became clear that he was intentionally positioning himself out of order to get a better seat (when his wife objected, he told her to be quiet and just do as he did). Everyone around was visibly upset by the ordeal.
We were consistently in the latter portion of the B or C boarding groups, so whenever we boarded there were already a fair number of passengers seated. Every row, from the very front all the way back, was filled window, aisle, with an empty seat in the middle. It seemed even people traveling in pairs would sit this way to deter others. For a couple traveling together, it became a very stressful situation. We would either make a beeline for the rear of the plane in hopes that there were still two seats available somewhere, or sit separately in whatever middle seats were left. Nobody ever offered to shift over a seat to accommodate us (ironically, people with assigned seats on other carriers' flights are willing to make even this most basic gesture).
It seems to me that Southwest has situated itself in a strange gray area between free-for-all boarding and assigned seating, and I believe that's a problem. It may be very simplistic of me to say so, but I think Southwest should either stick to its guns and retain an entirely open boarding system (or to whatever extent it was 'open' prior to these most recent boarding procedure changes), or migrate all the way over to assigned seating (and continue to attract customers with your friendly personnel, comfortable travel environment and low fares). I'm sure there were customers who hated the free-for-all boarding process, but there were also those who loved it and chose Southwest for it, and I think that's a healthy thing. Either stick to your roots or convert to assigned seating and be confident that Southwest will retain customers based upon the qualities I've mentioned... but this muddy middle ground, as evidenced by my own travel experiences, is just no good.
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