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Southwest Airlines Community

Boarding

Lmkel68
Adventurer C

I LOVE Southwest's open seating policy BUT what can be done about passengers not boarding in order as they should? I assume there is not a process in place to make sure passengers board the flight in order. I was with the A31-60, while theperson in front of me was with her friend and she was in the B40 spot. I'm just curious since I purchased EBC.

2 REPLIES 2

Re: Boarding

elijahbrantley
Aviator A
Solution

While there may not be a "policy," I have seen that happen many times before, and every time, I have seen the gate agent kindy remind the person that they are in the wrong group and will need to wait for the appropriate time.

-A List, Companion Pass holder

Re: Boarding

DancingDavidE
Aviator A
Solution

@elijahbrantley wrote:

While there may not be a "policy," I have seen that happen many times before, and every time, I have seen the gate agent kindy remind the person that they are in the wrong group and will need to wait for the appropriate time.


You should certainly compare positions with anyone around you.

 

I think you posted a portion of this story on another thread - the new info here is that B40 was boarding with her friend who presumably was in the correct A-number position?

 

So in that case it is obviously someone who knows they are sneaking in, which my other advice about letting someone know in case they aren't aware of how boarding works, etc. etc. wouldn't apply.

 

There isn't a great option here, I haven't ever seen anyone notify the gate agent about someone cheating. Often if they catch them then they get bumped back, but if they are in a mode of scanning, scanning, scanning then they will just go through, I haven't seen any evidence that the scanning software itself would make an alert for someone out of order.

 

This is probably even tougher on mobile boarding passes since the gate agent wouldn't see the position until it was already scanned.

 

In a practical sense if the A-person was going to save a seat for the B-person anyway, then it's somewhat academic for one person to do this that would be sitting in a middle seat anyway.

 

All I can suggest in this case is letting the gate agent know that you saw someone sneak through, maybe they'll take that as an incentive to be more stringent on future flights.

 

 

Home airport MDW, frequent visitor to MCO to see the mouse.