The very last corporation that truly put every American on equal footing and treated every dollar with equal respect has now gone the route of the Corporate Charge More For Better Seats model of the rest of the airlines.
I have had a lifelong love/hate relationship with SWA. They "democratized the skies" as a Texas marketer once put it. Before SWA only 24% of America had flown. Ten years later 74% had flown. They made a ticket affordable for working class Americans and made finding the right seat a function of when you arrived, not whether you HAD arrived. Once the dollar of an oil tycoon was equal to the dollar of a retired couple in El Paso.
Not anymore.
SWA, while being the most efficient airline in the country is also easily the single most uncomfortable airline to fly in the country. Their seats are cramped, old, cracking and peeling. Their middle seats are worse than waterboarding. The planes are all old 737s and many a loyal SWA flyer find out they have to get off an airplane and onto another because they "folks...it’s Captain Smith from the flight deck...we are looking for the special screwdriver that checks to see if the landing gear fuse box is actually working or it’s just a bulb...folks..."
On top of this, any Southwest terminal at Friday at 4:30 PM or near a holiday is not unlike Katrina in the Superdome. Crowded, frantic, confused, screaming babies, hungry people, discarded water bottles.
Follow me here.
They were the first to do on line check in and they gave everyone a fair chance to get to one of their aisle seats, or the coveted two aisle seats in the exit row. Once they had three groups of jump seats – where the actual culture of the SWA flyer existed. Now they are just row and rows of sardines like everyone else.
Once anyone who checked in 24 hours in advance had a chance at one of the few semi comfortable seats.
But then no idea that actually is fair or helps people goes unpunished in the US of Corporatestan. Now they hold their pre boarding for those who fly them more frequently ( translated: corporate flyers who have to fly all the time) and those who pay more for a ticket.
This new boarding model is being introduced airport by airport across the country and I can only hope that it backfires on them.
There are still five ways now to get a great seat on Southwest: 1) Get old and be pre boarded. 2) Forget your diaphram and have a baby 3) pay more for your ticket 4) fly them all the time 5) fly someone else.