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Fight the Power (another preboard thread)

ukchris2002
Explorer B

My wife, who travels only for leisure and really does not care where she sits, has never understood my frustration with the rampant abuse of the SWA preboard policy.  I am happy to have found a few like-minded folks on this board.  

 

For the “you can’t see every disability” crowd, I get it.  But if you think every person taking advantage of this system is truly disabled, you have not been paying attention.  

 

Unfortunately, short of pre-assigned seats (which I do not endorse), SWA’s hands are tied.  Your federal government will not let them ask for proof of disability, so they don’t.  Thank your congressman.  This problem persists throughout our government.  Rather than taking the risk that some people will be made to feel uncomfortable, we would rather just take people at their word, without any accountability.  

 

(And, as an unabashed libertarian, let me note this is just one more example of what goes wrong when we let government dictate the rules for private industry.  But that’s a rant for another day.)

 

To SWA, I encourage you to lobby for changes to the existing preboard regulations.  Lobby for rules that are fair, but require accountability and allow for common sense.

3 REPLIES 3

Re: Fight the Power (another preboard thread)

NicoleAshley
Employee
Employee
Solution

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Re: Fight the Power (another preboard thread)

DancingDavidE
Aviator A

@ukchris2002 wrote:

 

 

(And, as an unabashed libertarian, let me note this is just one more example of what goes wrong when we let government dictate the rules for private industry.  But that’s a rant for another day.)

 

To SWA, I encourage you to lobby for changes to the existing preboard regulations.  Lobby for rules that are fair, but require accountability and allow for common sense.


The future landscape is that companies like Southwest that don't deal directly in healthcare won't want to have any custody of customers' health data, or liability to interpret information presented to them. 

 

A higher level screening in this case will probably mean "more government" rather than less.

 

 

 

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

Re: Fight the Power (another preboard thread)

Missing_Aria
Adventurer C

I stand by my constant opinion of: I would rather watch 50 people faking a disability to game the system get away with it than call out 1 real disabled person as having a "fake" disability and make their day that much worse.

 

No, I don't think every person using preboarding is either permanently or temporarily disabled.  But I think it's a much higher percentage than most of you passing judgement realize.  Personally, I never flew SWA until I became disabled.  I literally found SWA BECAUSE they are so great towards people with disabilities.  I'd hazard a guess that I'm not unique in that regard.