I noted in the WN in-flight magazine that they were hiring Oracle programmers. Could they be converting their legacy reservations system to an Oracle system to have increased flexibility in adding fields such as seat #? $5m seems cheap for this type of conversion.

It will be interesting to see HOW WN assigns seats? First person to buy a ticket on a flight gets choice of seats on the airplane? On UA, elite status gets you up in the front half of the plane, in E+, WN has no elite status, so everybody's equal. Or, maybe they will assign the seats when you check-in 24 hours before the flight? Or, higher fares get to sit up front? Could be very interesting.

I would think assigned seats actually could speed up the boarding process. Board from the back of the airplane and you won't have the "A" group taking up rows 1-10, delaying people from getting to the back of the bus. Or, board Windows-Middles-Aisles. I'll bet someone at Southwest will do a study. Maybe they will make 20 minute turn-arounds!