The solution here is simple, and one that Southwest ought to have implemented:

1. require all people to get a "gold card" in order to enter the security line.

2. you get a "gold card" before going to security, and you can't get a "gold card" until, say, 1.5 hours prior to your flight.

3. Southwest is clear when you make a rez and on their website that you cannot enter security until 1.5 hours, so DO NOT get to the airport too early.

3. you get the "gold card" outside the terminal

Let us emphasize that the problem at BWI is pretty much unique to WN. I have been in and out of there on CO and NW three times in the last few months and have experienced no waits at all at the ticket counters and nothing more than a 10-15 minute wait at the security checkpoints.

CO and NW are easy at BWI, but they fly only to their hubs from BWI.

The reason that WN is bad there is that it is a de facto hub for them. They have a very large number of routes in and out of there and very high frequency.

Top it off with the fact that a larger percentage of WN travellers are leisure travellers, with more bags and less travel experience, and you have a mess!

You get what you pay for Southwest could care less if you miss your flight. Low cost<> No frills<> No worry<> its not our problem blame it on 9-11> Thats what I was told flying from there home Dallas Love field last week. IF I had my choice I would never fly them.

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

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.

Confused. I've never seen it where a skycap got you to the front of a line, only carried your luggage to the front. Once you check in you don't have any luggage, so a skycap wouldn't be of much assistance. Are there places they escort you to the front too?

monitor and richard,

Glad to hear that NW is not a problem (heading to BWI on Thurs.)!

It appears the WN business model has broken down. For the third day in a row, there were near riots in the three lines (bag check, security and gate) of incredible length each WN customer had to endure at SJC. Meanwhile, long though they were, the American lines moved swiftly.

What excuses are they making for this? Hello, Herb Kelleher, it's been three and a half months. It's time to get it together and figure out how to fix the problem.

Just saying, oh, we have more volume than we expected won't hack it, especially given the fact that it's right around Christmas and Southwest KNEW they'd have a lot of people trying to fly them.

Screw 'em. They aren't all that much cheaper and I'm not putting up with that crap.

One thing that must be remembered about Southwest is that no assigned seats are an essential part of their business. They do that in order to force passengers to get to the gate early, and scramble to get on the plane. As a result, they are able to turn a plane around at the gate -- unload, load, and depart -- faster than any other airline. This is one way they keep costs ultra-low: essential for them since they regard their competition the automobile more so than other airlines.

I flew Southwest - ONCE. IMHO it's just a case of getting what you pay for. If you want to pay the lowest possible price, then you can't really complain about being treated like an animal, since many folks looking to travel ultra cheap are willing to put up with shabby treatment. I'd rather take my business elsewhere, where the pax are treated better.

If it's any compensation, a similar problem occurred at LHR T1 on Saturday morning when lines for BMI snaked around the whole terminal and security lines were just as long. My flight to EDI was held to allow late check in passengers to get to it as the rest of the day had full flights.
However, especially frustrating were empty chec-in computers, which could easily have been used had the staff been available.

Agree that BWI can ne a nightmare. Due to some stroke of luck, I haven't been in one of those lines yet, but see them all too often.
I flew out on WN last week with a lot of worry about the lines and leaving on time, esp. since I had to check luggage with the Xmas gifts. There were no lines at the counter or the security check point. Whew. No lines returning at PBI either. However, as I came out of BWI's concourse B, there were about 150 folks in four lines waiting to get through the security checkpoint for that concourse. And that wasn't a security infraction day.

Which is more reason why they need to fix this type of problem... Why should I stand in line and wait 4 hours for a 45-minute flight? If it's going to take me that long to fly BWI-ORF, I might as well drive...

Well, it doesn't appear that this business model will work given current security restrictions. So they can either adapt or die.

Also, they can't have it both ways. You can't say, don't show up more than two hours early and then screw people by either giving them crappy seats or by having them miss their flights.

Who'd have thought that the first airline to have real problems post September 11 would be the one that everyone was pointing to as a model of efficiency.

At 2pm today there was no one at all in line at BWI. I asked the counter agent about this, and she said they only have those huge lines after some sort of a security mishap, of which there have been 4 lately.