I fly SWA nearly 90% of the time for business travel and nearly 100% of the time for personal travel. I generally achieve Companion pass status annually. What is odd is that some of SWA's competitors reward their most loyal customers "Global Services" with priority boarding before anyone else. The idea is a customer who has achieved the highest level of status is rewarded despite having an assigned seat. So wether this person boards first or last, their seat is still the same asigned seat he/she chose. Now, SWA allows those their most loyal customers who have achieved Companion pass status, highest status achievable with SWA, with the opportunity to board with crying babies/ families after half of the plane has boarded with the A-group (assuming an A-group boarding pass wasn't assigned during check-in due to last minute changes as is usually the case with corporate travel). What truly makes this a conundrum is that on SWA boarding sequence matters significantly since their policy is open seating and the most loyal sometimes get to board after at least 60 other people have boarded the plane. With the other airline, the most loyal are rewarded with priority boarding before anyone else despite boarding sequence having no impact on the seat that the customer was assigned/chose? Although I don't know this for sure, I would assume that a Companion pass status customer generally has a higher propensity to fork over the cash for a business select seat. I would assume a greater propensity for this scenario that a non-A-list customer to pay the money for business select. If my assumption is even partly true, then the number of Coamanion pass status customers who are not business select (either because all of that particular fare was sold out or travel was booked at the last minute) are few at best, why not let those customers board with business select? Any thoughts?
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