Originally Posted by
pinniped
WN's boarding process itself is the most civilized of any U.S. carrier. The numbered BP's completely eliminate the gate lice problem...
Other airlines could learn something from Southwest's numeric BPs, even those that have assigned seats and multiple cabins.
I agree. And one big factor is, the Southwest queue-by-number, make-friends-with-your-linemates system is explicitly transparent and egalitarian. There is little or no class-tier friction, no weird resentment of the A-1-15 crowd. It's all right out there. This relaxes people and quells suspicions that they're being screwed. If you got B-59, you got B-59. It wasn't because you didn't have some special card or code, or you were excluded, mean-sorority-wise, from an arrangement other, smarter people helped themselves to.
Whereas a boarding process with nine discrete zones, plus preboards... all based on inscrutable, indecipherable status lines either earned or purchased... is virtually designed to make people mad. You're told you have "priority boarding," yet you're in BG 4 or 5? Behind 100+ others? You're a last-minute flyer and you're in BG7? The system has
got to be screwing with people. So the crowd thinks.
The US3 have (for the most part) wrecked their reputations by failing to meet expectations -- for honesty, humanity, reasonableness, competence in irrops, transactional fairness, you name it. It's not that the snacks are inedible; it's that you always feel forced to play chess against the airline, and that the deck appears stacked against most mortals. That is not the story on Southwest, when it comes to boarding and a lot of other stuff.