Southwest Opts for Bingo Seating

Southwest has spent the last year trying to decide whether to keep open seating (take any seat when you board) or switch to assigned seating (seat number given to you in advance) like every other airline. Today, they made their decision. What is it?

Bingo seating

Ok, so nobody is calling it Bingo seating yet, but I’m hoping the name catches on. They’ve tried a million different ways to explain how it works, but I think the most effective is their Boarding School site. (That’s also where I took the picture from at left.) Let me try to give a brief summary.

Instead of checking in and getting an A, B, or C pass, you’ll actually get a letter and number combo. If you’re the first person to check in, you’ll get A1 (mmm, steak sauce). If you’re the 20th, you’ll get A20. The A group goes all the way up to 60, so if you’re the 61st person to check in, you get B61 (Bingo!). B goes up to 120, so then if you’re a real slacker, you’ll get C121 all the way on up. Almost all of Southwest’s planes seat 137 so the worst you can get is C137. There are 25 planes that have only 122 seats, so there will end up being only 2 lonely people in the C group on those.

I think images really can help you understand how things work when you get to the gate. Take a look at that drawing up top as well as the photo at right that was taken at San Antonio. See, they’ve been testing the idea there and my friend, Towers and Tarmacs blogger Benet Wilson, took this shot when she flew threw.

First, people with disabilities and unaccompanied minors board. While this happens, they call the A group (all 60 of them) to hop up and stand by the sign that has their number. As you can see, it’s divided into groups of 5 people, so you don’t need to get in line until they call you. When everyone in the A group is standing, they open the doors and everyone walks straight down the jet bridge on to the plane, free to take any seat they’d like, as long as they give it back after the flight.

Then, while the B group is getting their act together, families with small children get to board. Yup, that’s right. All those families that jump to the front of the line pretending they need extra time when they really have a 12 year old son who is faster than they are . . . don’t get on first anymore. Oh, you can always just check in early to get on early, but if you don’t and you’re a family, you’ll hop on after #60. Unless there are a lot of through passengers sitting on the plane from a previous flight, there will still be plenty of open rows for families to sit together at that point. Not sure how they’ll handle it if there are a lot of people onboard already. That might get ugly.

Once B gets on, the C stragglers get up and grab the remaining middle seats next to the two large people in the last row. Sucks to be them, but if you get a C boarding pass, you just don’t care enough anyway.

If this explanation didn’t work for you, try this link or the Southwest blog post, both of which give you other ways to understand what they’re doing.

So what do I think? I like it a lot.

The biggest issue with Southwest right now isn’t open seating. It’s the cattle car mentality of standing in line for an hour before your flight. I mean, remember when you could only check in at the gate? People would line up well over an hour before the flight to get their plastic boarding card. Then they’d go wait in line for another hour at the gate. Not worth it. This system basically takes the lines out of the equation because there are only 4 other people in your individual group. You don’t gain anything by standing there.

Now I’m not sure how they can enforce this – it’s just going to be the honor system I suppose. But peer pressure will probably play a part as well. Not even back cutsies for your friends will happen here. The angry mob behind won’t allow it. And according to Southwest’s tests in San Antonio, they say this actually saves them a minute or two over the current system. Fantastic.

The test that happened in San Antonio is now permanent. You’ll never see the old boarding method there again. But the rest of the system won’t see it happen until early November. I assume that’s how long it’ll take to get all those line placeholders constructed . . . and the bingo cards.

Southwest did leave the door open for further enhancements down the road. Lots of speculation is out there about what that means. It could be a “pay for A” type of model where a small fee gets you to the front of the line. But one thing is clear – there won’t be any assigned seating for a long time.