I have flown on SWA since the early 70's and have lived through all of the boarding pass interations. In the beginning they were dolled out based on when you showed up. So people always wanted to be early. Due to complaints, or rethinking the situation they changed the policy in the 80's and you got a random pass when you showed up. You could potentially get there 10 minutes before the flight and get in the A group, or 2 hours early and be in the C group. After a lot of complaining and whining they arrived at their current method. It took the common use of the internet to help with the way they do it today. They also decided to start selling multiple tiers of tickets. Back in the beginning there was only one ticket price on every flight. Now there is a minimum of three. I do not however remember a time when you were only assigned a group. Every flight I ever took all those years was always with a group and a number and I flew all over the place in the mid 80's through the early 90's. Of course it meant very little because I remember flying so much on business that they would send drink ticket books to me all the time and my business associates and I would sit at the back of the plane where there were 5 or 6 empty rows and we would hang out with the flight attendents and drink beer. Now days it seems like every flight is full. Of course we were flying back then to Tulsa, Midland/Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo so I guess there were not a lot of folks going there.
