I must admit I'm disappointed that SWA has done this. They're still my favorite airline, but the early boarding fee moves them more towards the rest of the pack. SWA can no longer call themselves the "no-fee" airline, although I'm glad to see they're still resisting the 1st and 2nd bag fees.
As to the $10 boarding fee, my inclination is not to pay it. I generally fly with my family of 4. Our flights tend to be 2 hours in length. I'm hoping that 24 hour checkin still gets me at least a mid-B boarding position and that we can still sit together. If not, my kids are old enough that I would feel comfortable letting them sit by themselves for a couple hours. Its just not worth $80 extra for us to sit together.
I also think Southwest made a mistake with the timing of this. Instead of just dropping it on us, it should have been phased in when the booking window opened up and only for flights starting on the first day of the window. In this case, Southwest should not accept early boarding fees for any flights prior to January 9, 2010. For those that do wish to take advantage of early boarding, it is unfair to those flying before that date that booked in the past. They may not even be aware of this opportunity and may have an unpleasant surprise when they go to checkin 24 hours before their flight.
This just all seems a mistake to me; they could have added $7 to each ticket and we'd never know the difference.
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Time to start guessing again for the next release date. I remember reading over at Flyertalk their expert guessing late March, which would have been either today or next Thursday. Using the 120/180 rule Bill mentioned, doesn't April 26 make more sense, since it would be close to the 120 days out from the current end of inventory, which is Aug. 24?
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