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Southwest Charges $10 For Early Boarding Privileges

Erik Folgate

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.

Categories: Spending and Saving, Travel

Erik Folgate
Erik and his wife, Lindzee, live in Orlando, Florida with a baby boy on the way. Erik works as an account manager for a marketing company, and considers counseling friends, family and the readers of Money Crashers his personal ministry to others. Erik became passionate about personal finance and helping others make wise financial decisions after racking up over $20k in credit card and student loan debt within the first two years of college. Another one of Erik's projects is the site, Stuff We Google.

Learn more - including co-founders Andrew Schrage and Gyutae Park.

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Comments

  • Jon

    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.

  • http://madsaver.com Mac

    Yuck. I’m not liking how all the airlines have started nickle & diming passengers now. Miss the old days. I just got a ticket from Sun Country and only then found out that you can’t get an assigned seat ahead of time unless you pay about $10. Not much, but I still won’t pay it. And of course, they’ll be charging me for every checked bag ($25 EACH WAY). Now wonder why the plane tickets still seem low. You’re only seeing the “before” price.

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