Southwest Charges $10 For Early Boarding Privileges
September 2, 2009 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Spending and Saving, Travel
I thought this article was relevant to my last post about Southwest charging an extra $10 for early boarding privileges.
Southwest will charge an optional $10 for anyone who wants to upgrade their ticket for early boarding. The significance of this is that Southwest doesn’t assign seats, so early boarders will get seat preference and they will most likely get overhead luggage space near their seat.
Why We Like This
Charging extra for something like this is a much better revenue model than charging for checked baggage. Sometimes its impossible to fit everything into a carry-on bag, so you are forced into a fee. This fee is completely optional, and it adds value to the customer who purchases it. Charging for checked baggage is like a restaurant charging you a flat fee for a server to wait on you.
How To Avoid The Fee
At only $10 a pop, my guess is that many travelers will opt to pay for this, so make sure you arrive earlier than normal when taking a Southwest flight. If you don’t upgrade, still get there early to get in line for a better seat.
My wife and I just flew Southwest on Labor Day Weekend. Getting there early won’t get you the best seat. They have a couple of ways you can check in early, either at the kiosks in the airport, or online up to 24 hours prior to your flight. Either option lets you print a boarding pass, with a boarding number on it. The boarding group you are assigned to determines the order in which you board the plane, and thus the “quality” of your seating. I’d guess that they hold open some slots in the “A 1-30″ group for people who are willing to pay the extra $10. We were in the B 1-30 and B 31-60 groups (last to board), and still didn’t have much problem finding decent seats together on flights that were full, so unless it was extremely important to me to be first off of the plane on landing, it’s not worth the extra cost. If you’re first to board, you also spend quite a bit of time just sitting in your seat waiting for everyone else to board and settle in before departure.