Southwest Airlines' Boarding System

It's been a few years since I've flown on Southwest Airlines, and when the wife and I took a side trip from San Jose to Las Vegas this week, we were able to experience their new (well to me, anyway) boarding system.

When last I flew Southwest, you had to line up in columns: A, B, C and D. The earlier you checked in, the higher in the alphabet you lined up. The ultimate was to score line A, which means you got to board first. Check in later and you got relegated to line B or higher.

Boarding early on Southwest is important because there is no assigned seating. First-come, first-get. That's important not only because you get to sit in the front of the plane, but you also get your choice of overhead luggage compartments.

And for people on short trips with just one little roll-on, that's highly desirable.

They changed it a little since my last time. Now they have these numbered stanchions that indicate a position within each lettered line. Therefore, now, the earlier you check in, you're guaranteed not only to be in the A line, but also in a higher position. A-1 is the ultimate, then A-2, then A-3, etc., all the way to A-60. Once the A's have started boarding, they set up the B line (B-1, B-2, yadda yadda), and so forth.

When I checked in online in San Jose, despite filling in the form and clicking on the "Check-In" button precisely 24 hours prior to our departure, we were assigned A-55 and A-56. It turns out you can get even earlier check-in (36 hours) by paying ten bucks a person and about 50 people must have done that because there they were, in front of us.

Still, we got good seats together just north of the wings.

On the return trip, I was unable to get to a computer exactly 24 hours prior to our flight. By the time I found a FedEx Office, it was 23 hours and 35 minutes before our flight. I was a little depressed, thinking we were going to be relegated to the B line and possibly even the C line.

As it turns out, we were assigned A-50 and A-51, a skosh better than our flight over, despite the later check-in. Why? I think it's because in San Jose, the people checking in were residents using either the early check-in option, or their home computers and I was competing with that. In Las Vegas, however, the passengers probably were all tourists chasing around town looking for a computer or check-in kiosk in their hotels (and we all know how slow THOSE are).

Anyway, we got even better seats on the return flight to San Jose.

The only thing about Southwest is that our gates always seemed to be the one farthest from the rental car and/or shuttle bus dropoff points.