Multiple earthquakes are rattling Santorini, a volcanic island in Greece, prompting authorities to dispatch rescuers with tents, a sniffer dog and drones, and to shut schools on four islands.
25.01.2025 - 14:03 / thepointsguy.com / Andrew Watterson / Ryan Green
Southwest Airlines is getting set to completely overhaul its seating setup, with its first-ever assigned and extra-legroom seats officially launching next year. Even after the changes, though, passengers will still get an individual boarding number at check-in, the airline tells TPG. And, just as they do today, passengers will continue to line up at the gate, single-file, along its signature boarding area posts.
All things considered, Southwest's future boarding process will look remarkably similar to the one-of-a-kind setup used today — a process executives last year said they hoped to use as a blueprint even as the airline shifts to assigned seating.
"Our customers really appreciate the calmness at the gate of lining up," Ryan Green, the Southwest executive overseeing major changes at the airline, told TPG in an interview earlier this month.
"What they don't like," Green added, "is the anxiety of, 'What seat am I going to get on board?' So we're hoping to solve both of those."
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Under Southwest's current boarding procedures, passengers are assigned lettered groups and numerical boarding positions within that group.
Just before departure, they line up along boarding area stanchions before proceeding onto the jet bridge, one at a time.
It's a far different boarding setup than the more traditional "groups" used by other carriers — and a process that, Southwest says, prevents the sort of boarding area crowding (sometimes dubbed "gate lice") other airlines have sought to eliminate, most recently with new technology to catch line-cutters at one major U.S. carrier.
"It can be chaotic at other airlines," Southwest chief operating officer Andrew Watterson said, speaking with TPG alongside Green last week in Washington.
"The fact that it's so orderly [at Southwest]," Watterson added, "we do get big kudos from our customers."
Yet, there was a reality in Southwest's unique boarding process: It was devised specifically for a half-century-old open-seating policy the airline now plans to wind down a year from now.
The same could be said about the EarlyBird check-in and Upgraded Boarding optional add-on products the Dallas-based carrier offers passengers as a way to get an earlier spot in line — and by extension a better seat.
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Southwest is now in the process of rethinking its existing boarding process to fit its future assigned-seating reality, Green said. The airline, he confirmed, plans to award better boarding positions to A-List elite status members, as well as travelers who select higher-priced tickets and its new extra-legroom seats.
"Our best
Multiple earthquakes are rattling Santorini, a volcanic island in Greece, prompting authorities to dispatch rescuers with tents, a sniffer dog and drones, and to shut schools on four islands.
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A spike in seismic activity has raised concerns of a potentially powerful earthquake on the Greek island of Santorini, prompting some residents and travelers to evacuate as a preemptive safety measure.
Schools were closed and emergency crews deployed on the volcanic Greek island of Santorini on Monday after a spike in seismic activity raised concerns about a potentially powerful earthquake.
Chances are you’ve heard about the Real ID — maybe you already have one. The gist is that starting May 7, 2025, every U.S. citizen who is 18 years and older will need a Real ID or approved alternative to fly domestically. If you don't have one, you’ll be denied entry at TSA checkpoints.
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If you’re thinking of a European vacation this year, then you’ll have plenty of choices on how to get there. Major airlines are adding new routes en masse—at least 35 in all—for an increase of 7,000 seats per day over the Atlantic this summer compared to the same period in 2024, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.