by With the holiday season approaching, parents are already dreading the headaches that can come from flying with a large family.
Some airlines, like Spirit (SAVE UP) – Get a free report, will charge more if you want to make sure the whole family is seated together on their flight. Hawaiian, Alaska, American Airlines, and many others let you pre-assign a seat when you purchase a ticket, so you can make sure everyone is seated together.
Then there’s the matter of Southwest Airlines (LUV) – Get a free report, which takes a different approach than the rest of the industry. The Texas-based company uses a system where, as soon as passengers check in, they are assigned to one of three boarding groups: either A, B, or C, and a position from 1 to 60. Here’s how you’ll do it. It ends up being like this something like B47 or C2 on your boarding pass representing your reserved seat.
Once your boarding party has been called, find your assigned seat in the queue and board the aircraft in numerical order with your boarding party. Once you and your party are on board, simply select an available seat as there are no assigned seats.
But many customers have complained that this system doesn’t ensure a family sits together, although you can argue if you’re so inclined that it’s a fair system because it’s a random one. And if you prefer, you can purchase EarlyBird Check-in, which doesn’t guarantee an A position but gets you on the plane earlier, or you can purchase Upgraded Boarding 24 hours before a flight, which allows you to upgrade your boarding position to A1-A15 depending on availablity.
At the moment, families with children under six can board after Group A but before Group B, but that doesn’t always work, and recently The Points Guy advocated that “airlines should just automatically open their seat maps to parents with children under.” 15 years.”
While parents would love that, the airline industry at large hasn’t indicated that such an approach is on the horizon anytime soon.
But Southwest has been quietly trying out a new program that should make things a little easier for anyone flying a small.
Southwest is quietly testing a new program
Based on comments from a recent Media Day presentation, Southwest is piloting a program in Atlanta that will make life easier for families, Beat of Hawaii reports.
As part of the program, parents with children under the age of six are allowed to board before Group A, regardless of their Boarding Group number. But they won’t be able to sit in the first 15 rows.
This solves an issue where Southwest’s unique boarding setup can sometimes make it difficult for families — especially larger ones — to find seats together. Under the previous system, families with children under the age of six boarded after the A group, as well as all passengers with pre-approval.
Most Southwest aircraft have 175 seats, so more than a third of that (sometimes nearly half) could be filled between the A group and pre-approved passengers. The new policy is unlikely to be loved by those with A-list status (who check in first and almost always end up in the A group, but can check in right after if they don’t), but it’s likely to be loved by the parents celebrated.
Is Southwest trying to get ahead of the Department of Transportation?
Southwest’s goal is to keep families happy while reducing boarding time.
It should be noted, however, that the Department for Transport has urged airlines to allow families to sit together at no additional cost, warning that this may soon be necessary if airlines do not voluntarily take up this position.
A 2016 law — the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act — gives DOT the ability to regulate family seating, so Southwest may be trying to stay ahead of the curve to avoid more extensive regulatory action.
The change, if implemented on all Southwest flights, would solve the problem while also ensuring that parents don’t have to pay for early check-in or priority boarding just to sit together.
