Southwest airlines offers an open seating arrangement for seating on their planes. Passengers are given cards labeled “A”, “B”, “C”. “A” card passengers are boarded first, “B” card passengers follow and “C” card passengers board last. “B” and “C” cardholders don’t always get bad seats. We flew from Albany, NY last year and had “B” cards. We were directed to enter the plane from a rear door and ended up with an aisle and middle seat in row 16. Not bad at all!
Southwest has decided to modify their boarding procedure by adding numbers to the cards. Passengers will still be assigned “A”, “B” and “C” cards but each card will now have a number on the card. For example, cards will read “A 9″, “B 18″ or “C 2″ or something similar.
Southwest cites customer suggestions of improvement in the boarding procedure as the reason for the modification. Normally there is a line winding through the gate area because passengers queue up 90 minutes prior to boarding. The usual free for all then ensues when passengers rush on the plane in an attempt to stake out their seats FIRST!
Now, passengers will be boarded by letter and number. It is way to divide the letters into more manageable boarding groups, something that airlines who offer assigned seats have had in place for quite some time.
Filed under: Air Travel, Southwest Airlines, airline, airline industry
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