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Road Life

Cattle call' in the sky spurs ingenuity

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published August 17, 2005

Raylene Adams drew a booby prize in the race for a good seat on Southwest Airlines Flight 2710. It was, of course, her fault.

Adams got to Tampa International Airport just a half hour before the 7:25 a.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale departed, and the kiosk spit out a boarding pass marked "C." That put her in the last group to board the plane and find a place to sit.

A Tampa health care executive, Adams struggled to jam her rolling garment bag into an overhead bin as passengers chuckled and shook their heads. She squeezed into the middle seat between two strangers, then asked one to move his briefcase under the seat in front of her.

Southwest calls the way it loads customers "open seating." Unhappy flyers curse it as "the cattle call."

Like it or not, the method is supremely egalitarian. No matter how much they paid or how much they fly Southwest, early birds can get the worm. Still, people find ways to game the system.

Some want seats with more legroom in the first or exit rows. Others want to sit in front (to get off the plane faster) or an aisle seat (in case nature calls). No one wants get stuck checking a carry-on bag because there's no room left overhead.

The key is a coveted "A" boarding pass, given to the first 45 passengers who check in. Landing in the next 45, the "B" group, usually means you won't find yourself next to someone. Everyone else, "Cs" like Adams, must fill in the best they can.

It's been this way since Southwest took wing in 1971 as a three-plane startup flying between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Under the first-come, first-served system, customers used to pay for their choice of seats with long waits at the airport. For more than a year, Southwest, like most carriers, has allowed customers not checking bags to get a boarding pass online. But there's a twist here, too.

While most airlines allow online check-in 24 hours in advance of the flight, Southwest makes customers wait until after midnight on the day of departure.

Fine if you're a night owl, but not for sleepyheads stumbling out for an early flight. Southwest hopes to fix a glitch in airport computers and offer 24-hour advance check-in soon.

Until this month, a few members of another special group were exploiting a loophole. Unlikely as it sounds, the culprits were "preboarders" - passengers allowed to get on the plane first because they have physical problems or are parents traveling with young kids.

Certain customers, mostly the large and tall, get "A" passes to get a first shot at exit row seats. When they went inside, some complained that the seats were taken by preboarders.

That raised the obvious question: What are children or people with physical disabilities doing in the exit rows?

The complaints prompted Southwest to make it official policy Aug. 1 that preboards can't sit in exit rows. Gate agents are making announcements and some aircraft have signs warning that children 15 and younger can't sit in exit rows under federal regulations.

Of course, airlines largely work on the honor system for qualifying preboards.

A few years ago, my family watched as gate agents in Chicago announced that parents with kids younger than 5 could board first. An embarrassed dad dragged along a little girl screaming, "I'm NOT 5 years old!"

I guess it can't hurt to try.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or 813 226-3384.

[Last modified August 17, 2005, 01:08:12]