Road Life

Want an A card? It's yours for $5

Road Life STEVE HUETTEL E-mail: Click here Archive

Here's a business story with lessons for any budding entrepreneur: Find a untapped niche and be ready to hold on tight when your world turns upside down.

Kate Bell lived and worked in New Mexico and traveled each weekend to see her then-fiance, now husband in Phoenix. Her commuter vehicle of choice was a Southwest Airlines jet.

As any regular customer knows, Southwest doesn't assign seats. Instead, fliers board planes in groups based on the letter on their boarding card - first A, then B and finally C - dispensed on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Holy Grail is an A card, a guarantee you can avoid a dreaded middle seat, find room for your luggage in an overhead bin and sit with family or friends. Got a C pass? Fat chance.

Like so many Southwest veterans, Bell learned the trick was to check in online. But there was a small problem. Unlike other airlines where you could get a boarding pass on the computer 24 hours in advance, Southwest made them available only on the day of your flight.

So, Bell had to stay up after midnight for her A pass, then wake up four hours later to drive to the airport in Albuquerque for her morning flight. Over and over.

Then lightning struck. Surely, she figured, people would pay for someone else to check them in while they snoozed through the night. BoardFirst.com was born.

The deal's simple. Provide your flight confirmation number and credit card information. BoardFirst charges $5 per ticket for Bell or an employee in California to go online and reserve a boarding card you can pick up at the airport. If they don't get an A card, it's free.

Bell wasn't getting rich by any means. A great day was 50 requests, the average 15 to 20. But there were fringe benefits like the guy who thanked her for the cards that made it possible for him and his wife to sit with their six kids on their way to Orlando.

Last week, Bell rejoiced when a New York Times writer called out of the blue. That evening, she felt like the sky fell when Southwest said it had started allowing online check-in 24 hours in advance of flights.

"The next morning," she said, "I was ready to take the whole thing down."

Southwest says the change had nothing to do with Bell and her Web site. The airline had been working on fixes to computers that previously could issue cards only on the day of the flight. They weren't ready to go until last week.

Southwest has no beef with BoardFirst, says Brad Newcomb, senior vice president for interactive marketing. "But I'm not sure why customers would . . . pay a $5 fee on a Tampa-Fort Lauderdale $31 fare," he said.

Bell quickly realized that hard core Southwest fliers faced a new problem: it's too easy to get an A card. With so many people competing during waking hours for the 45 A cards on any flight, goes her new pitch, why not let BoardFirst snap up yours as soon as it's available?

Go girl.

From the good news/bad news department.

Pretzels are returning for US Airways fliers. The airline cut them to save cash in bankruptcy. But executives decided that after the merger this week, the new US Airways will follow America West's policy of serving snacks in the air.

Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines' "SimpliFares" got more complicated. The airline had raised the $499 one-way fare cap by $100 and this month, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported, Delta began requiring a Saturday night or three-night stay to get its cheapest fares. Ugh.

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

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