Seems like a good compromise has been mentioned here and elsewhere but there is no response from SWA here. Specifically, allow child preboard with a limit of one or two parents per child only, and require them to sit at the back of the plane.
The benefits would be:
1. No one with A section cards (or probably B) would be impacted because whether its under the old or new boarding number scheme, they would still get their desired aisle/window/exit aisle seats.
2. Due to laws of physics, it would be impossible to say family preboard slowed up anyone.
3. Families would get the extra time needed.
4. The people who dislike sitting near children would be able to avoid them.
5. The boarding process will not have to be stressful with SWA personnel filtering out families and trying to move them ahead of the B line passengers. The SWA personnel would only have to say that you may now preboard, but you need to sit in the back rows so the cost to them is zero.
6. SWA could avoid the negative publicity and look like they care about children and listen to their customers. Actually, just announcing this would lead to all sorts of news articles and lots of free positive publicity.
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Brian, its just that I'm frustrated that SW seems to have thrown this "add-on" sort of idea of deleting pre-board into a change of policy. Frankly, I don't care much about that other policy change but it seems like this "add-on" was not directly vetted or addressed as far as I can tell. On a lighter note, I kind of disagree with an earlier thing said about the mad scramble for seats. I do not see any such scamble when I fly. People seem rather orderly to me. And I am even more confused by comments about people waiting in the the A, B, C lines. Why would people complain about something voluntary? If someone has an A card, what are they in line for? Why? Why do they stand there? Really, I don't get it. They are going to get a nice seat no matter what. This is also mostly true for B. The only reason I stand in line at A or B is because I know I'll be sitting for the next hour or so. I just don't get why anyone would complain about something so voluntary. Are they trying to save the extra two minutes getting off the plane? Its that important to them? As I said, things are different if you have kids and are trying to assure a spot next to them, don't want them to get stepped on by others, and need the extra couple of minutes to put the car seat in place so I'm not having to juggle the car seat, keep the kid out of the way of others all while trying to get space for the extra items children need. And I travel a bit and I really only remember once seeing a group purposely taking advantage by using a baby to get their whole group of 7 or 8 on. I believe my experiences must be different than others.
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Brian, actually thats kind of surprising to hear you quote something like that and agree with it as an employee of SWA. You quoted : "Pre-boarding was a security blanket, comforting but not actually necessary. Every parent knows what a fuss erupts when you take that security blanket or favorite stuffed toy away."
So, that pointedly condescending comment equates a parent trying to do the best for their child to nothing more than a child herself. I hope the senior management you say are reading this don't see that. You are calling parents children? Is that how you see us? Well, this child does not particularly like having my 2 year old walking down the aisle while grownups are hoisting heavy bags over their heads, sometimes unsuccessfully. And I've seen more than a few people get hit by these bags. My 2 year old would not fare as well.
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Theres a lot of comments against eliminating the kid preboard. And yet this topic is buried under a blog title saying nothing about kids. I wonder what kind of comments SW would get under a blog titled: "From now on, we will not treat a 2 year old differently than a 28 year old"
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Yes Tamara thank you for participating in this. I am against eliminating the kid preboard. However, what you said confirms my concerns. To quote,
"I was recently on a trip with my family. My husband, 17 yr. old daughter, 13 yr old son and my 2 year old son. (yea, quite a spread there lol) Of course being Employees, we were last to get on board. I was very happy to be on board but at that time, there were no seats together for me to sit with my 2 year old. No one was exactly willing to promptly give up a seat either. But you know what? Our FABULOUS flight attendants came through for me!"
So, in your words you thought no one would willingly give up their seats. And so you had to appeal to the fiight attendants to help? That is the position you feel comfortable putting your customers in? Begging for seats or appealing to a higher authority for help? I'm beginning to see the point of those who earlier said they thought SWA was trying to drive families away.
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Finally a couple of comments that make it appear someone from SW is still reading this. Seems like when customers started to disagree with the new policy, they dropped out. We were told initially that comments on an earlier blog like this helped to decide the policy, but now negative comments that should have at least the same weight are not being read? I was not even aware that there was a blog here earlier and ran across it by accident. Perhaps many of the people (including parents) who are more impacted by this are not blogging because they are busy elsewhere? Instead you seem to have gotten a nice sample that includes many young singles with questonable judgement that seriously seem to think people will have kids and plan a trip because they can get on a plane three minutes earlier than they can? Some of this stuff is bordering on weird.
I also seriously question the comments above from people implying they travel a lot and others are an inconvenience. I travel a lot. I no longer care about view windows. I no longer care about the front or back of the plane, the few minutes difference is nothing. I don't care about an aisle seat cause I don't have incontenence problems and for actual honest-to-gosh frequent travelers like me the only preference is its nice not to have to sit next to a stranger if possible because the seats are narrow. Note that for those young singles complaining about kids, they bought one ticket while the family of four bought four. I believe four tickets represents more revenue to SW so maybe, just maybe, SW should pay attention a little more to the comments from parents above. And some of those parents, like me, also travel alone alot too.
I still fail to understand why whoever is at SW responsible for suggesting these changes is mixing up the boarding pass number/lettering issue with the issue of pre-board for kids. They are totally separate. I have to imagine if the two were not mixed together there would be an even louder and clearer negative response to eliminating kid preboard.
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Two comments: Someone said those who are arguing for having preboard for kids probably are abusing the rules. I am one of the ones arguing in favor of it. I have not taken a child on Southwest for over a year but I did take one a few months ago on Aloha, which had both preboard and assigned seats. I'm arguing for what right, not whats good for me. Second, people keep talking about online check-in. Well, thats nice for them maybe if they are starting a trip, but in general I do not have internet access at my destination so it only works half the time.
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OK, I'm back again. I'm not too convinced when you indicate the surveys were handed to each of the impacted customers and the result indicated passengers were slightly less stressed. Go to wikipedia, look up the Hawthorne effect. When people know they are being studied, they have a tendency to perform better and be happier. And maybe I'm missing something here but it makes no sense that pre-boarders slow things down because everyone gets boarded, so does it really matter who goes first? Are you mixing up the two things being discussed which is the new ordering (which is not an issue I care about, I'm sure whatever you do will be OK) with the issue of eliminating preboarding for children. Hand one of those forms to a parent who got to the flight late, hassled by security cause of the baby stuff, and then has to beg passengers on the full flight to be able to sit next to her children.
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Brian: There was a comment, I believe it was all in caps, that self-censored itself with a bunch of %$#$% type stuff that referred to groups getting on first because they had one child with them. Maybe its just me, but my memory of that comment was that it was very angry and threatening. Perhaps I've had too much coffee today. I'll stop now. By coincidence, I'm booking a flight today with you and should be doing that now instead of letting the time go by and losing the chance for cheaper seats.
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Look, Southwest, do you need help? Then ask. Most of us really like this airline. And many of us here are professionals and/or are providing you some professional level ideas. I do statistics and financial analysis. It seems to me from all this that your consultants may have sold you a very poorly thought out study that concluded you should eliminate pre-board for kids. Don't take it personally. Dive down into this and likely there are about three people, probably consultants, behind this. Comments against eliminating pre-board are not comments against your airline, it is against those three people's judgment on this one issue. For example, their study probably didn't consider the elimination of freedom of choice for those who can get on a plane to not sit next to a child if thats their preference. And potential liability if someone like that extremely angry guy whose comments got deleted takes action when the baby in the next seat is crying during the landing. If I'm seated pre-board with my child, someone who sits next to me will probably not have a problem with limited child misbehavior, but if I get on in the middle of boarding I won't know I'm sitting down next to such a nutcase.
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As I mentioned above, I'm against any policy to eliminate the child pre-board. The comments that the adminstrator deleted and other comments provides another reason not to eliminate the pre-board. Clearly there are people who are very angry for whatever reason about children and airplanes. Allowing pre-board provides the freedom of those wingnuts to sit away from children. Those angry people can get on the plane, see where the kids are, and sit elsewhere. Isn't that a win-win situation?
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This blog is just too long to read, so perhaps what I'm saying has already been said. But I think discontinuing the children pre-boarding is a tremendously bad idea. And I may have the details wrong cause I can't find details on it. Think it through, guys. So worse case my 3 year old will have to sit between two strangers? I would tell you what I think of that but there would be a lot of four letter words involved. Get to the airport early? Well gee, the earlier you get, and thats over an hour plus now because of all the extra time it takes to get through security and such with kids, the worse they behave later in the plane. I believe the people deciding this perhaps are some smart young MBA's without kids? And yes, don't blame the kid cause you were exactly like that when you were a kid. Oh, I can just sit with my hand on the keyboard and click check in at home? Well, no because of our wonderful Homeland Security list that has a similar name to mine requires about half the time I am refused electronic check in (I guess I'm a security risk only half the time? bizzare). What many of the comments here completely fail to comprehend is that while individuals can pack and hit the airport with little thought (I do that myself when traveling alone once a month), parents with small kids have a huge amount of work they put into this with organizing food, entertainment, clothing/diapers, lugging child seat, and figuring out the crazy rules to get through security (yes, that twit really is standing there in a uniform telling me that he is confiscating my 2.5oz bottle because my zip lock bag its in is one gallon instead of one quart and yet there is only my toothbrush and chapstick as the other items in it). Anyway, Southwest, it should be obvious I could go on for an hour on this, but to get back to the point, I think this is a tremendously bad idea that is yet another case of fresh young MBA quality decisions without really considering the results.
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