With the holiday season upon us, parents are already dreading the headaches that can come from flying with a big family.
Some airlines, like Spirit (SAVE), will charge more money if you want to make certain the entire family sits together on their flight. Hawaiian, Alaska, American Airlines, and many others will let you pre-assign a seat when you are purchasing a ticket, so you can make certain that everyone sits together.
Then there’s the matter of Southwest Airlines (LUV), which takes a different approach from the rest of the industry. The Texas-based company uses a system where, as soon as they check-in, passengers are assigned to one of three boarding groups: either A, B, or C, as well as a position ranging from one to 60. So you will end up with something like B47 or C2 on your boarding pass, which represents your reserved spot.
Once your boarding group is called, you find your designated place in line and board the aircraft in numerical order with your boarding group. Once you and your group are onboard, you just pick any open seat, as there’s no assigned seating.
But many customers have complained that this system doesn’t ensure that a family will sit together, though you can make the argument, if you’re so inclined, that it’s a fair system because it’s a random one. And if you want, you can purchase EarlyBird Check-In, which doesn’t guarantee an A position but does get you on the plane earlier, or you can purchase Upgraded Boarding 24 hours before a flight, which does allow you to upgrade your boarding position to A1-A15 depending on availability.
At the moment, families with children six and younger can board after the A group, but before the B group, but that doesn’t always work out, and recently The Points Guy advocated that “airlines should just automatically open up their seat maps for parents with children 15 years or younger.”
While parents would love that, the airline industry as a whole has not indicated that such an approach is in the cards anytime soon.
But Southwest has been quietly trying a new program that should make things a bit easier for anyone flying with a little one.
Southwest Is Quietly Testing A New Program
Based on comments from a recent media day presentation, Southwest is testing a program in Atlanta that will make things easier for families, as reported by Beat of Hawaii.
As part of the program, parents with children six or under will be allowed to board before the A group, no matter what number their boarding group is. But they will not be able to sit in the first 15 rows.
This solves a problem where Southwest's unique boarding setup can sometimes make it hard for families -- especially larger ones -- to find seats together. Under the previous system, families with kids six or under, boarded after the A group, and any passengers with pre-boarding authorization.
Most Southwest planes have 175 seats, so more than a third of those could be filled (sometimes close to half) between the A group and passengers with pre-boarding authorization. The new policy will likely not be loved by people with A-list status (who get checked in first and almost always end up in the A group but can board right after it when they do not) but it's likely to be celebrated by parents.
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Is Southwest Trying To Get Ahead of The Department of Transportation?
Southwest’s stated goal is to keep families happy while reducing boarding time.
But it’s worth pointing out that the Department of Transportation has been calling for airlines to allow families to be seated together without additional cost, and has indicated that it might soon require this to be the case if airlines don’t voluntarily adopt this position.
A 2016 law — the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act — gives DOT the ability to regulate family seating, so perhaps Southwest is trying to stay ahead of the curve in order to avoid more extensive regulatory measures.
The change, should it be implemented across all Southwest flights, would solve the problem while also making it so parents don't have to pay for early-bird check-in or priority boarding just to sit together.
