I Flew Southwest On Day One Of Assigned Seating — The Boarding Was A Mess And Bin Space Was Chaos

I didn’t plan to be a guinea pig for Southwest’s first day of assigned seating, but after American’s storm cancellations and operational meltdown I rebooked—and got a front-row seat to the new boarding reality. Seats may now be assigned, but the gate process still forces early queuing while carry-on bin space turns the aisle into a traffic jam, with passengers backtracking to stow bags and flight attendants trying to manage the pile-ups

With the winter storm, I first went through three American Airlines itineraries but they couldn’t get me to D.C., so I bought a new Southwest Airlines ticket to Baltimore.

I experienced what could generously be called confusion, mostly on the part of flight attendants oddly enough. They were directing people and slowing down the boarding aisle as people found overhead bin space near their seats – rather than picking seats, in part, based on where there was bin space available.

Like other airlines, Southwest has been adding oversized bins to planes. They didn’t need to before, since people got free checked bags and didn’t bring to much on board. Now, though, everyone carries on as much as they can because it saves money.

So people would stop at their seat, see no bin space available, and have to head back in the aircraft to stow bags – only to return down the aisle to their seats. This was far more chaotic than other other airlines.

Was it a sign that the Southwest Airlines web page for its new boarding process was returning an error?

Here’s how it works:

• Groups 1-2 are the most expensive fare class passengers, passengers paying for extra legroom seats, and A-List Preferred (top tier elites)
• Groups 3-4 include the next fare tier, Choice Preferred and A-List elite passengers (who didn’t get an extra legroom seat) Group 5 is Southwest credit card customers
• Groups 6-8 are standard fare passengers without status, followed by Basic Economy passengers who board last.

That’s the gist of how boarding works on most U.S. airlines now, but Southwest has adopted a bit of a hybrid between standard boarding and their old style of boarding.

• In the old days of before January 27, passengers got a boarding number based on their status, fare, or the time they checked in for the flight. They’d line up in that boarding order, and had an incentive to board as early as possible to have access to the best seats. Often that meant all “A” passengers (1-60) would line up in advance, then all B’s and all C’s.
• Before the changes that followed 9/11, Southwest didn’t actually have boarding passes to print boarding order on, so they handed out plastic numbered boarding cards.

What happened today, and in some sense this is like United whose boarding is similarly bad, is that Southwest agents called up all group 1 and 2 passengers to line up before they began boarding.

Then, once boarding time commenced, they did pre-boarding for passengers needing special assistance and military. And only then they began boarding group 1. So everyone was standing in a queue for awhile. Once group 1 was done boarding and they’d moved onto 2, they told group 3 to line up in group 1’s place (the stanchion sign, though, still said Group 1).

One benefit of assigned seats is supposed to be that you don’t need to line up before boarding begins in order to get the best seat. But you’re still lining up before boarding begins. And since Southwest now charges for checked bags, you have to board early to be able to bring carry-on bags on board.

In other words, passengers don’t save time. And Southwest is making more than one group line up at once. So even if you’re not in group 1, you need to queue even before boarding starts. That’s convenient for the airline – they want to board quickly, and make up for the extra time it now takes them to gate check bags, and to board with more carry-on bags. But that comes at the inconvenience of passengers.

It’s common to say, now that Southwest charges for assigned seating and checked bags, that they’re just like every other airline. The once most consistently profitable airline in the history of the industry has copied financial laggards like American Airlines and JetBlue. But the truth is that Southwest is worse than the rest of the industry.

They no longer offer perks and flexibiltiy, like travel credits that don’t expire. But they also do not have AC power at their seats, seat back entertainment screens, first class, lounges (yet), meals on board, or frequent flyer partners you can spend miles with to get to Europe or travel in business class. And they have the worst-performing wifi among U.S. airlines that offer it. They are just like but less than. Unfortunately, they have over 40% of the departing seats from my home airport (Austin) and the new airport lease sets them up for even more growth when the new concourse is built.

With open seating, every seat was still available more or less for customers buying their tickets just a few days prior to travel. With other airlines, these passengers often pay the most but the good seats are already gone. In fact, if you had to change flights there’s still be good seats available – elite frequent flyers would at worst board after A group and before B, meaning usually it was possible to still get an aisle seat at least. Those days are gone.

More From View from the Wing