Southwest: No more cattle call

Sept. 20, 2007

At Southwest Airlines, you're still going to be free to move about the country, but the company's famed cattle call boarding process is being tweaked.

And for those families with young children that have enjoyed preboarding: It's over.

It's all part of a change in boarding policy at Southwest, a company that has long bucked the industry trend by asking customers to line up before boarding and pick their own seats when they got on the plane.

Here are the two major changes: Folks with youngsters will board after the first 60 passengers board in what's known as the "A group," effective Oct. 2. Beginning in early November - the exact date is not set - passengers will board, roughly, based on the order in which they check in.

"That's right, I'll say it," Gary Kelly, the airline's chief executive said at a news conference Wednesday. "No more cattle call."

The 36-year-old policy of open seating remains, however, and passengers will continue to select their own seats once they're aboard. But the airline will assign a number to each passenger within the three boarding groups, A, B and C.

The change will be made sometime in early November at all the airports Southwest serves, although the exact date is not yet known, the Dallas carrier said Wednesday. The practice is already in place in San Antonio, where it was tested.

In the new system, passengers will receive a boarding pass with a letter and a number when they check in for a flight. At the gate, they will find the A, B and C waiting lines separated into groups of five people - for example, those holding A1 through A5 boarding passes, next to a space for those holding A5 to A10. Passengers will queue in two lines: A1 to A30 on one side of a marked column and A31 to A60 on the other side. The same procedure will follow for passengers in the B group and then the remaining people in the C group will board.

Kelly said that in recent years he has heard from passengers who favored assigned seating. That was rejected when Southwest found a majority of passengers favored the open seating procedure.

The airline, however, needed to make the procedure more efficient, and it believes several minutes can be shaved off the boarding process with the tweaking, said Brandy King, a spokeswoman.

"Customers will know where their boarding pass aligns in the process as soon as they check in, and this will eliminate the need to 'camp out' and hold a spot in the boarding lines," Kelly said Tuesday on his blog at the Southwest Airlines Web site. The blog also has a video of the new procedure.

"One of our primary goals with the new boarding is to give customers back what they value most - time," Kelly said in a statement.

Kelly also said Southwest will cease preboarding families with children under 4, effective Oct. 2. He said he did not think it was fair for those passengers to automatically board first.

Disabled passengers will still preboard flights, spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said. They will be followed by the A group (which may include families with children under 4). Otherwise, families with young children will board following the A group, and they will be followed by groups B and C.

People making comments on the blog overwhelmingly approved of the board-by-the number protocol, but many objected to denying families preboarding.

"One of the last airlines to allow families to preboard, Southwest had become our preferred carrier," wrote Dyana, on Wednesday. "It gives Southwest that characteristic 'nice' vibe. This change puts Southwest right back in the pool as just another unsatisfying option," she said.