Southwest to get rid of open seating, offer extra legroom in biggest shift in its history
Southwest to get rid of open seating, offer extra legroom in biggest shift in its history
Southwest is under pressure to drum up revenue from an oversupplied U.S. market and an activist investor.
- Southwest plans to offer pricier seats with extra legroom and end open seating on its planes.
- The shifts are the most major in the airline’s more than five decades of flying.
- Southwest expects to start selling seats with the new cabin option next year.
You're viewing a single thread.
Guess they're upgrading to Windows 95 and getting some new features in the process!
I hate them removing open seating though, which airline experts have found is basically the fastest, easiest system for boarding planes. Obviously just to allow per-sest pricing, the bane of travellers everywhere.
Open seating must make up time at the end when there's fewer choices, because my experience has been it's just as bad as people trying to find their assigned seat. People come into the plane and either stop to ponder where to pick a seat, or the pick the first seat they can and take their time putting stuff up, blocking the rest. I would think assigned seats and start boarding the rows back to front, or maybe stagger the loading, would be faster.
Gold. So the real answer is to get rid of baggage. And people.
The ending about deboarding the plane was a great feeling of frustration.
In leaving any type of place with a lot of people, I just sit and wait it out. I'm not fighting the masses who obviously have more important places to be. Sit a few minutes, then get up and leave without having to stand in line. What would be awkward is if everyone took that approach, but I have a feeling it will always be a minority.
That's how I try to be as well, but when you get flight delays or a connecting flight that got changed to one with a miniscule layover, you sometimes just can't afford to be patient.
Which sucks, because you know 95% of the people standing up don't have a real time limit, and so you stand there staring at the back of the person who just wants to be the first to go wait an hour for their flight while you brace yourself for flat out running across the airport.
One time, my mom and I had a connecting flight but like literally no layover time. We had to run from one gate as soon as we deboarded to the next (DFW, btw), so she asked the flight attendants if there was anything they could do.
They actually had everyone wait to let us get off first so we could make our connecting flight, and we just barely made it. That's about the only time that's happened, though.
Another time I missed my flight by literally 30 seconds. Security took a long-ass fuckin time to get through because it was the ass crack before dawn, and they closed the door to the gate, as I was running up to it. The woman at the desk barely even looked up when I came by to try to get on.
I knew this was CGP Grey!
Remember, like in 2006, when they'd board the plane in order? Eg the back of the plan boards first, then the middle, then the front. And no one is trying to push past each other, no one is in each other's way, it's just efficient and easy.