What I have learned from talking to a couple of people in YYC who work for Westjet:

1: Yes, the Company is looking at preassigned seating to be implemented along with webcheckin.

2: There is a concern that with preassigned seats guests will not be as incentivized to get to the airport early. The current policy encourages early arrival at the airport and the guest is less likely to feel inconvenienced because of long lineups.

3: Currently, the line up process moves faster and more orderly because there are fewer late arriving guests who need to be pulled out of the line and processed.

4: Currently, the boarding process occurs more smoothly because more guests arrive at the stated boarding time and fewer guests are trying to get through under the wire.

5: It is anticipated that kiosks and web-checkin will help to alleviate the above noted concerns. However, Westjet is very new to the kiosk game (the original Touch N Go kiosks were not well utilized) and is still figuring out the customer who uses kiosks vs the customer who will not. Westjet feels they have a higher number of travellers who only fly 1-2 times per decade and are not comfortable with the kiosk process. Educating the customer on the kiosk is less beneficial to Westjet because the guest flies so little. Westjet was quite amazed when the Kinetics kiosks were introduced in YYZ and YVR (the airport authorities owns these terminals) and the acceptance rate was very high. This pushed Westjet to use the kiosks in all major centres.

6: There are many permutations and combinations that must be written into the computer if preassigned seating will occur:
- The aircraft must be weight and balanced. The current checkin system runs a process in the background to ensure that passengers are evenly distributed throughout the aircraft. In certain circumstances the a guest will only be allocated a seat on one side of the aircraft or will be placed near the back of the aircraft. Preassigned seating doesn't work well with this porgram.
- Families must be considered. There must be enough rows blocked on the aircraft for a call centre employee or CSA to get a family to sit together. Preassigned seating must allow for the guest to chose the seat up to 80% PLF and still allow for rows to be block that are family friendly.
- The above mentioned combination is not Open Skies standard code, it relies upon the code to be written for the specific airline.

7: How much money should Westjet spend on a computer system that might not be arround much longer. Westjet is all ready replacing the Revenue Management System because it broke last year. Other systems are nearing the capacity limits and require an upgrade or conversion to new more robust system.