Eddie,

Are you referring to Southwest Airlines processes? Southwest provides boarding passes which give a passenger only a place in line. If they arrive after boarding has started, they lose the ability to get a good seat. If they arrive after the flight departure time, they don't fly on that flight. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how there's an increase in probability of flight delay.

1. Being that the earlier the customer gets there the better the seat.

2. That the customers early arrival saves the airline money by having the flights leave on a timelier manner.

Then doesn't the ability of being able to print your boarding pass 24 hours before the flight leaves eliminate the second advantage. Since the customer will no longer have to arrive a few hours early at the airport, but will now be able to arrive just a few minutes early. Thus increasing the probability of having to delay a flight in the process of waiting for a customer.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly reiterated on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning that the airline will continue to focus on price-conscious customers – that Southwest will remain America's low price carrier. As I explained earlier, rapid turn times are the most important factor in driving down costs. Southwest Airlines believes open seating encourages rapid boarding. Together with other processes, rapid boarding enables fast turn times and lower costs.

Southwest experimented with assigned seating in San Diego in 2006. The company quickly determined that open seating was an operational and marketing advantage they would not give up.

I'm sure all the benefits contribute to the bottom line. Price differentiation for Business Select adds revenue, earlier boarding passes may give Southwest better information to manage seat capacity, better customer service = more repeat customers. Plus, the line movement seems to be much quicker. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps the improved organization of the lines prevents some Brownian motion from impeding progress.

In my experience, the change has been a huge improvement in client experience. In fact, I prefer the new method over the reserved seats of other airlines. I find that I can be far back in the boarding line, yet still have more acceptable seat selection than I can find when booking on another airline.

Steve

I susggest that there are more like me than there are that love or enjoy the experience.

Like someone up thread mentioned, rush onto the plane and sit cramped for a long time while everyone else boards; or, lay back and watch until you can walk up and into the plane with no standing in line only to arrive at your seat and have no place to stow your carry-on luggage.

Pick a displeasure.

SW is the least annoying.

Most FedEx overnight packages are sorted at its major hubs. But some are retained for more local movements. One example is the intra-Texas shipments between the four large cities. As a FedEx industrial engineer in the late 80’s, I helped design the Texas Bleed Off Network (TBONE). We used small aircraft in simultaneous clockwise and counter-clockwise routings to move thousands of pounds of priority packages between Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas.

Over my 14 years at FedEx, we investigated many options to relieve the time pressures on the Memphis and Indianapolis national hub sorts. But every hub bypass proposal had significant costs. The fully automated sort facilities at the major hubs could not be replicated all over the nation. So a bypass analysis was generally a tradeoff between increased cross country transport costs and increased local sort costs.

You seem to understand well the Southwest business model.

Cooperation across workgroups is probably the most important factor in minimizing Southwest turn times.. Southwest has negotiated workplace flexibility with its unions. Flight crews and ground crews are free to help out wherever needed. All employees understand that continued employment plus raises and benefit increases are dependent on maintaining turn time efficiency.

Process design and even equipment design are also key factors. One example: Southwest convinced Boeing to relocate service panels for the lavatories. Equipment which drains lavs no longer blocks other equipment during turn time.

Minimizing turn times is Southwest Airlines critical success factor. More than anything else that minimization enables their industry leading low fares.

I'm not sure unassigned seating is the biggest factor, but it certainly provides them some benefits."

You cetainly seem to understand the Southwest business model better than most.

You are correct that other factors may be even more important than unassigned seating in minimizing the turn time of Southwest aircraft.

The incredible attitude of cooperation across workgroups is probably the most important. Southwest has negotiated a relaxation of workrules with its several unions in order to enable flight crews and ground crews to help out wherever needed. All Southwest employees understand well that meeting the turn time goal makes possible their continued employment plus the raises and benefit increases the company can afford in even tough times like these.

Process design and even equipment design are also key factors. One example: Southwest convinced Boeing to relocate service panels for the lavatories. Equipment draining lavs blocks other equipment during turn time.

Minimizing turn times is the critical factor in achieving the industry leading low fares. This is Southwest's critical success factor.

I think it has already been mentioned, but there were two main stated reasons for the new policy.

1) You can buy a number in the top 15. It's actually fairly cheap – $15, I think. More revenue, plus happier regular flyers.

2) You don't have to line up in advance to get your spot.

If there is a number 3, it's that in some airports the lines became a real mess.

Also, it's worth pointing out that most of the additional time required for people to self-sort into the queue is time where the plane is not yet at the gate.

The goal is to minimize the time from pulling into the gate to leaving the gate. Southwest excels at this.

I'm not sure unassigned seating is the biggest factor, but it certainly provides them some benefits. They clear standbys in no time at all, for example. I can't tell you how many hours I've saved by walking up to the gate 10 minutes before a flight leaves and getting on board when my scheduled flight was 2 hours later. (Houston to Dallas every half-hour…)

I think regular Southwest customers are well-trained to the system and swear by it, while regular customers from other airlines are a bit discomforted by it. I remember not liking it at first. But when you see them consistently bring a plane in, unload it, and have it loaded and back up in the air in 20 or so minutes you start to appreciate it the model.

Yes and no. I normally prefer sitting as close to the front of an airplane as possible (always seems to me to be a smoother flight, and you get off the plane quicker at de-board). However, I've noticed that Southwest planes tend to fill up towards the front, so even though I always get checked-in early enough to get an A group, I'll typically walk back to the middle-back of the plane. I prefer window seats, and if you're A45, most of the windows near the front of the plane are taken. So I deliberately get the hell out of the way towards the back of the plane, where I know I'll have room for my carry-on luggage and where I think there's less chance that someone will take the middle seat on a non-full flight.

I know for certain that Southwest has investigated assigned seating. They remain convinced that unassigned seating creates the urgency necessary to get customers to board faster. I agree with them. Every time I fly on a plane with assigned seating, a number of passengers simply wait as long as possible to board, inconveniencing everyone else and delaying departures.

Don't underestimate the value that Southwest provides in fast boarding and fast turn times. The major reason they've been able to survive so well offerring the industry's lowest fares is the high utilization of aircraft and human resources.

I also believe Southwest wastes far less of passengers' time than do the other carriers. They continue to be the number one or number two large carrier in on-time arrivals. With Southwest more than anyone else, what you are promised is what you get.

I hate Southwest's boarding procedures. Their service is excellent, but why can't I just have an assinged seat of pretty much my choosing? Before, when they had the cattle call, people were forced to line up an hour early which stinks when you spend as much time in airports as I do. Yes, it made for faster boarding but so what? Take offs and landings are far, far more controlled by flight traffic than boarding procedures.

Now, with the fixed number but no seat policy there is no decrease in boarding time and instead of getting to the airport early, I simply have to wake up or interrupt work 24 hrs in advance. None of this improves my experience at all.

As for short boarding times, most of Southwest's flights are continuations, ie the plane is partially fully at most of the stops. Therefore, less people to board means lower times. Further, they board in groups of 15 which goes a long way. Most zoned boarding done by other airlines have too few zones and a mass of frequent flyers in the first zone. Again, the faster I get on a plane the longer I have to wait on the tarmac. Assinged seat and a single carry-on means I'm getting on dead last.

All that said, they have the best trained staff in the business and priority runway status at Philly Int'l, so as much as I think their boarding is foolish (after all, I get an aisle seat no matter who I fly with) they're still a great airline…except for the 73Gs they fly which I hate.

Economists think they "know" what good things will be produced by this government regulation or that government agency. But "scientists" are inevitably shocked by what actually takes place on the ground — consider what Jeffrey Sachs & other economists anticipated would be the result of reforms in Russia, and what has taken place there in the real world.

People on the ground made use of all sorts of odd contextual knowledge known only to them, and they were involved in any variety of curious learning paths.

All of this was unimaginable to the economists, because it was local knowledge and local learning. The economists thought they new better who things would go, using their bare little formal tools, and they had no idea how the real world of government regulations and government agencies would end up operating.

Southwest Airlines aircraft turnaround times are about half the industry average. Creating a sense of urgency among the boarding passengers is a major reason why.

Sorry to hear about your experiences with late Southwest Airlines flights. Southwest has consistently been at the top of the industry in ontime flight arrivals. In fact, no large airline has beaten Southwest over a full year since at least 2003. JetBlue, when it was much smaller, did edge out Southwest a few years back.

U.S. Airways may win the ontime arrival constest in 2008. They have completely reversed their service problems by offerring significant financial incentives to employees. Southwest will be Number 2 among the large carriers, unless it can wildly outperform U.S. Airways for the rest of 2008.

American Airlines didn't reduce the middle seats, but it did reduce the number of seats in its coach cabin. American removed 6 percent of its total seats in order to provide more legroom in the coach class cabins (American Airlines spends $70 million to give you more legroom)

Despite an expensive marketing campaign, More Room Throughout Coach was a financial disaster. American lost $millions of revenue on high demand flights which would have filled even with less legroom. Post-9/11 passengers were more attracted by price discounts than by extra legroom.

I don't think anyone major player in the industry will experiment again with reducing the number of seats in an aircraft.

What I have noticed though is that now airlines are boarding from the window seat to the isle. So they are getting everyone out of the way the should be in the window first. This is how US Air does it now and it was very quick.