Family boarding rules
 

Hello, we are booked on the OAK-HNL flight in August, we are two adults and two children (aged 7 and 4).

It says on Southwest website, two adults can board with a child aged 6 or under during family boarding. In our case, would all of us be able to board at family boarding or one of us needs to board separately? Ie. One parent board with both children at family boarding and the other parent board according to his boarding position?

Thanks.

From what Ive seen you all will be able to board after group A boards

You can all board together between the A and B groups.

Our kids are currently 12 and 5. Most recent flight was 3 weeks ago LAX - BWI. Our boarding pass positions were 3 in the B50s and C1. But we all boarded after the A group. The other family taking advantage of family boarding that day was 4 adults and 2 kids (looked like grandma and grandpa with parents - one child was a baby).

In my 12 years flying with young kids, Southwest has generally been very good about accommodating families.

You can all board after the fake pre-boarders and A line.

Coming back from Hawaii recently there was an announcement that family boarding was explicitly 2 adults per <6 year old, and that additional adults had to board according to their boarding number order.

This was the first time I heard this rule/announcement -- but with the very large number of kids coming back from spring break could see them trying to prevent a baby from being a free pass for a large party of adults.

That said -- I could see the 2 kids + grandparents scenario sliding through the gate attendant 99% of the time. And of course -- you could always just save seats -- but that's a whole other topic. :eek:

Glad to see WN tightening this up. I've seen ops agents let entire families board in the A1-15 group when only one pax had a BP there.

I've heard that announcement many times and I've also seen large groups of people board with a single child, sometime the OA allows it. If I Remember Correctly at one time the rule was ambiguous about who could board with a child, then I think that added parents, but that also caused several incidents where a child was traveling with another relative or non-parent adult.

95% of the flights I line up for: "This will be a completely full flight!"

95% of the flights I get on: Not completely full

95% of the flights I work: people no show or misconnect :D

Agree. Glad this is being enforced. And also wish the FAs would stop the ridiculous “this is going to be a full flight” nonsense. I understand no-shows and misconnects, but this is just flat-out untruthful most of the time.

"))
 

luv FAs and denton drive together decided long ago the cabin crew would stand aside and allow boarding combat to unfold unabated and un-adjudicated because it goes faster that way. likewise, the management/FA ecosystem have reached confirmation bias on the topic of the "anxiety" announcement (i.e. 'were in crisis mode because there won't be an inch left to spare!). they believe that not making that announcement results an an increase in boarding time by 20%.

What?

Boarding combat? I’ve flown WN weekly for years and have never witnessed this. Please enlighten us.

There are people here who from time to time have threatened all sorts of physical actions with people saving seats they want. I've never seen anyone actually do in in hundreds of flights on Southwest. I think it's mostly keyboard courage..

I have a flight in July K.C. to Orlando round trip with my 14 year old son. I used the 2 free early bird check in that come with my Chase card. I bought my son early bird for the return trip. For the outbound, I didn’t, figuring that I could go onboard with early bird, take a seat in the back half , and set my coat on the adjoining seat. If I check my son in at exactly 24 hours, hopefully he gets no worst than B 35-40. If that doesn’t work, I’ll move further back.