Opinion

Southwest's boarding strategy may cost more time, airline's bottom line

I am distressed to see that Southwest Airlines, the industry's most customer-friendly and egalitarian carrier, is considering assigning seats as a means of achieving a more rapid boarding process and, hence, turnaround ("At 35, Southwest's strategy gets more complicated," Cover story, Money, July 11).

Assigned seating likely will not only fail to speed up boarding, but it also could even result in a lengthier wait for passengers. Southwest's ability to dispatch aircraft with enviable speed is due, in part, to the fact that customers line up to board and then are able to choose any open seat. People spinning around in the aisle trying to locate their row, sitting in seats that were not assigned to them, requesting seat changes from flight attendants and seat-assignment duplications are all time-consuming irritants that Southwest today appears to avoid.

The real means of facilitating a quicker, more civil boarding process is to limit the amount of baggage passengers haul on board - specifically, anything that has wheels on it. In my experience, which includes more than 150,000 air miles yearly, roll-aboard bags clog aisles, are heavy and awkward for most people to lift, require constant reorganizing in overhead bins and are often required to be "gate-checked." All this contributes to a longer, inefficient, stressful boarding. The latest trend among the "legacy" carriers of charging people to check bags is misguided because it encourages them to compound the difficulties airlines face in achieving optimal performance.

Christopher McBride

Denver

What's broken?

My wife and I fly on Southwest several times a year, and we are very happy with the present boarding system.

Southwest has consistently shown a profit while nearly all the other airlines have lost billions. To CEO Gary Kelly: If it is not broken, why fix it?

Ollie B. Emerine

Elizabethtown, Ky.

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