Here's more on that situation. And after reading the response of the folks at Southwest, I will NEVER fly them. Period. I'll walk first.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Dec21.html
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">After waiting at the Southwest ticket counter almost two hours, Donald Kyzar, 42, of Waldorf, and his two teenage children ran to catch their flight to Jackson, Miss., but their seats had been given away to standby passengers. "The problems aren't because of the security procedures," Kyzar said. "They just didn't have enough people at the ticket counters."
Southwest spokeswoman Whitney Brewer also blamed early-arriving passengers for the waits and said she didn't know why people weren't pulled out of line to make sure they didn't miss their flights. Brewer said lines would be shorter if people arrived no more than three hours early. Even so, she said, she couldn't guarantee that passengers would be flagged for their flights if time got tight. "It's tough to say you won't miss your flight," Brewer said.
So why should passengers help out by not getting there too early if the airline can't guarantee they will get a seat? "We're asking customers to get there on time," Brewer said. "If they work with us on that, we'll get them on their planes as soon as we can."</font>
Brewer and her fellow employees can go straight to hell. I'll be ****ed if I show up two hours early, like you say to, and then find out that my seats have been given away to standby passengers due to your airline's flat out incompetence. Your stupid no reserved seating policy is what's causing this problem. People get there really early because they want to get good seats. Well, you can solve that problem by assigning seats ahead of time. If you want to keep those cheap plastic cards to save a few bucks, then print them up with a seat number and give those out.
It's ridiculous, and saying it's because of the aftermath of September 11 is absolute crap. They've had more than three months to get it together, and they can't.
Screw 'em. My butt will never be on one of their flights, ever.