nsx

I'm not a stickler for boarding order, but if I had bought Business Select for my recent flight out of Cabo (and I saw a few people who had) I would have been irate at being loaded onto a bus with 40 other passengers who then had an equal shot at boarding first. Taking a bus to the plane completely destroys the early boarding value proposition. This also applies to a lesser extent to EBCI purchase.

In this case the plane was only about 150 meters away, a shorter walk than we had already done inside the airport. In fact, we had walked a similar distance outside on arrival. So I don't understand why a bus was used.

Southwest needs to fix this, and soon.

steved5480

Hmmmm.... past trips down there, Southwest parked on a jetway (a nicer/new one as I recall). On one arrival, there were 2 other SW planes parked to the left of us (northwest, as the crow flies). They did have a large mess of the ramp dug-up just to the right (southeast) of the jetway we parked on. I wondered at the time if they were adding terminal gates/jetways. Were you parked out on the ramp "in-between" existing jetways, or.......?

Certainly agree with you re: B/S & boarding order. While very polite and efficient, past experience with the contract GAs at SJD (and CUN for that matter) is that they are sticklers for the rules re: boarding order.

LegalTender

A separate shuttle run just for elites would be cost-prohibitive. I don't see a WN-only remedy. Tarmac boarding is common all across Europe.

nsx

They could have taken the time at the air stairs to re-order the passengers while the bus returned for the next group. I did let the A1 guy go in front of me.

joshua362

Welcome to my world for years where I bought BS and it seemed like every single incoming connection was late rendering BS moot. Was there a separate bus for pre borders? I bet most of them would sprint off that bus or tarmac !

LegalTender

Was there a uniformed GA at the steps? I​​​​​​ doubt you could ask union FA's to do that. You'd need an extra contractor tasked to planeside since WN, I gather, has no full-time ground staff at CSL.

jeffandnicole

Been thru this in Punta Cana. They have a person on the tarmac at the stairway making sure A1 goes, then A2, A3, etc. However, this may not happen on every flight.

Of course, there's some people that don't care. Two women standing near me with A53 and A54 passes tried getting on. Early in the A's, the person calling the numbers stopped them. While still in the A40 range, they tried pushing their way on AGAIN! I didn't understand their need to push their way on. But, being I was slightly behind them, I knew who I didn't want to sit near on the plane!

It did appear the person caling out the numbers kinda stopped around the point where the EBCI passengers had stopped. After that people just got on in any order.

it does seem to make the whole lining up inside the terminal moot if all you're going to do is board a bus anyway.

Michael El

+1 Experienced this flying BA out of VCE a couple of weeks ago. Luckily BA has assigned seats as the last to board the bus were the first in the plane.

737MAX8

Experienced this at Cabo as well, and our plane was definitely far enough where we could not walk.

A1-B30 were on the first bus, B31-C60 were on the second bus (737-800).

When you board the bus, just stand by the door off to the side. Got one of my preferred window seats.

jeffandnicole

On my last trip that involved a tarmac bus, a family of 5 stood at the door - 2 adults and 3 young kids - with their carry-ons. It made trying to get on the bus for everyone else a pain in the butt.

And their inconveniencing everyone else went for naught when we got to the plane, as they were told to wait since they didn't have A boarding passes.

737MAX8

Yeah, standing in the door is a jerk move, and it sounds like someone was catching it, which makes this not a big issue after all.

But I just stand on the inside wall by the door, not in anyone's way.

Boraxo

WN should not sell BS if it can't fulfill the terms. We've been flying into Cabo for the last 10 years on UA & AS - the bus is quite common though unpredictable as sometimes we luck out and get to use jetways (more so on arrival).

Would be very simple to program computer to exclude BS fare category from SJD departures. But why give up the money unless you get sued? I'm sure they would argue that you still get the free drink and extra RR points.