Flying with Southwest Airlines – Review

Monday, February 25th, 2008 at7:03 pm by Wanda

Southwest Airlines Up once again at 6am to go to Las Vegas. It is quite cool and raining, in fact it has been cool and raining since we got to LA.

The hotel have arranged a car for us because the shuttle buses don’t start running until 9am and we have an early start. The ride in the car (which cost us $55! plus a $5.00 tip) is way more comfortable than the shuttle bus and our driver John is very friendly and chatty. We spend the time chatting about everthing from the lousy weather to travel. It turns out that John is an avid traveller and we have visited a lot of the same countries such as Italy and Hawaii.

Southwest Airlines is another new experience. They do not allocate seats but simply issue you with a boarding pass that has a group number and when your group is called you get on the plane and just select where you want to sit on the plane. At least that’s how we think it works. Everyday we experience something new.

It turns out we were almost right when a lovely lady named Michelle comes onto the intercom and explains the convoluted system.

So here is how it works: There are poles with numbers on – 1-5 , 6-10, 11-16 etc, and another pole with the alpha A B & C. You check your boarding pass for your numer and alpha, then when your group alpha is called you line up in order of the numeric on your boarding pass. I had B10 and Paula had B6 so we were separated by persons 7 ,8 & 9. Apparently this doesn’t mean that these are your allocated seats, when you board you sit were you like or wherever there is a seat avalable. At least we think that is how it works – will know more once we board.

Families with small children are permitted to board after group A passengers and before the passengers in group B.

We decided to have Mc Donalds for breakfast as we doubt there will be any on board service and we were too early to eat at the hotel. McDonalds in LA tastes much like back home, unlike New York where they serve the big breakfast with sweet biscuits like scones.

Okay back to the plane, because there is no seat allocation there are heaps of single middle seats. Single fares have filled up the window and aisle seats for a number of rows so this makes it awkward for people travelling together to get adjoining seats near the front. We head straight down to the back of the plane where there are plenty of adjoining seats.

Southwest is like Virgin Blue in Australia where you can purchase drinks on board. The trip is only an hour and a half so there is no food service except for packet of peanuts and a water or juice.

The flights are reasonably priced and apart from the ticketing system which actually slows down the boarding process, we would with Southwest in the future.