I work for southwest in Tampa, Fl and I can say after being in the gate area for the past week I have noticed a very positive change when we are boarding. I understand families being nervous about sitting together , I have a 7 yo son and I share that same dilema. We communicate with our flight attendants and make sure there are going to be seats together when "family boarding" begins. Another positive note is when we announce a gate change, In the past you would have hundreds lined up in the gate area and when we announced that the gate has changed you could witness complete chaos with people actually trying to run over each other because they didn't want to lose thier place in line. In the past when a flight had a delay our passengers were standing in line for the 40 minutes prior to boarding and then they sat in line for the remainder of the delay. This new boarding process eliminates that. I just watch our passengers and now they are sitting in chairs instead of laying on the floor or standing for an extra 40-50 minutes. Also families have the same chance of obtaining an "A" boarding pass as any other passenger. I have heard a lot of the same concerns from other passengers at the gate and I understand that we may lose some costumers because of these changes but I don't think you will find a more friendly set of employees than ours and that makes all the difference at the end of the trip.
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