Originally Posted by
dinanm3atl
I was replying to the person saying someone had not flown WN in 20 years if he thinks people are lining up early. They are. From 5, 10 or 30min early. Whatever their reasoning is they are doing it.
But it's worse on legacies. There's a large clump of gate lice surrounding every UA/AA/DL gate long before they call for first-class boarding. If you're in first class, you often have to push through the clump of people. On Southwest, the A's can line up whenever they like, but they're out of the way. And if you *don't* want to line up, just show up 30 seconds before they start boarding.
As for the example of sitting in the lounge until the door is about to close (as opposed to when boarding starts), who really does this?
I've only done it
twice - both times flying LH when their agent was taking me directly to the aircraft - and I even then, knowing the LH doesn't just let their first-class passengers miss flights willy nilly, I was nervous as hell about it. (Hey, shouldn't we go now? No, not yet?)
If I'm flying AA and hanging out in the lounge, I still find my way to the gate 30 minutes prior to boarding. Most gates don't really operate the priority queue as a truly separate queue, so showing up late ends up being a pain even if you're in F. The WN process is actually superior to the typical legacy process, whether you have elite status or not.