Originally Posted by expert7700

They are holding A1-A15 for today's flights despite having no possibility of having those fares already pre-sold at the BS rate. I wondered how they'd do this....

Any speculation if and when they release A1-A15?

1) 24hrs prior to flight for non A listers
2) 1hr prior to flight
3) never

The "fair" way to do this is option 3. This gives Southwest the maximum potential to make money, and it leaves A listers with the satisfaction of boarding first if nobody paid the BS fare. Though it leaves no open loophole for FTers to delete their BP and re-check in.

Option 1 or 2 would infuriate A listers to see a bunch of casual passengers running late at the airport who checked in 1hr or less prior to the flight get A1-A15. Southwest has no need to release any unsold A1-A15, since 3 groups of up to 60, leaves 43 passes that never need to be printed. The only awkward thing about this would be alot of empty spaces at the front of the A line.

Though it may be bad for PR, Southwest would have the ability to start making announcements at the gate, or during manual on line check in "We have additional priority boarding, double RR credits, plus a free drink coupon for anyone who would like to upgrade their fare to Business Select today"... Sounds disturbingly familiar to the "upgrade to 1st class is available" announcement that I heard on my one and only Legacy flight in the past 7 years.