I experienced a HORRIBLE boarding experience on Sunday flying SW out of San Juan, PR. Two things happened that were incredibly unfair to anyone who pays for EarlyBird checkin. First, the pre-boarding for those with "special requirements" or ''who need extra time" - the SW ground agents correctly accomodated an elderly woman in a wheel chair. However, they also allowed her entire extended family of about 15 people to pre-board with her! I don't think it was necessary for everyone in the group to pre-board - should have been just a couple of family members to assist the elderly woman. But the really horrible part was that between boarding Groups A and B - the gate agent made an accouncement that anyone from B & C boarding groups could immediately board if they would volunteer to sit in the exit rows! Total Chaos - people already lined up in the back of boarding group B and those still seated in group C all pushed to the podium. I don't know how many 'volunteers' were willling to sit in the exit rows - but I think it was way more people than actual number of exit row seats. I had boarding number B-1 so I had a front-row view of what was happening. The really disgusting thing is that once I finally got on the plane, the exit rows were not occupied! People used this announcement as an opportunity to jump the line and get better seating than their assigned boarding order would have otherwise provided. The pre-board announcement was absurd and of course the flight crew in the plane presumably had no way of knowing that the 20 or 30 people who boarded between groups A & B were supposed to be in exit rows. People standing patiently in line who paid for early-bird boarding were really p*ssed off. I've never seen this happen when boarding a SW flight and I hope that it's not a new boarding policy because it's incredibly unfair and unnecessary!
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