Pre Board Question

[elmo2wdw]

We will be flying SW in November and I have read about pre boarding with young children and printing at 12:01 am. I plan on printing at 12:01am but here is my question. I have 3 sons (2, 7 and 10). Will my 2 olders sons be allowed to preboard with us or will my DH and olders sons have to wait and and board with the group we print out? This is our first time flying and I really would like for us all to be together.

I hope that make sense?

 

[maryliz]

They will most likely allow your family of 5 to preboard. Definitely print out boarding passes at 12:01 to ensure "A's", because there have been times when they don't offer preboards for small children -- if most of the plane falls into this category, there's no point.

What they're definitely not allowing is other adults within the same party to preboard (ie. Grandparents/aunts/uncles, etc), which I totally agree with! If the other 3 must board with the regular boarding, you and DS2 should just pick a row closer to the back because the front fills up first so chances are the row beside/behind you will still be avail when your DH boards.

MaryLiz

 

[pyrxtc]

I still don't get why you would want to pre-board with young children? Why would you want to confine them for that much longer?

 

[goofy4tink]

Sorry to disagree MaryLiz but both times I flew with SW...last Friday out of TF Green and then back again from MCO on Tuesday, they were allowing family groups to board together. And as I have mentioned before, some of those groups were big...mom, dad, several kids (only 1 under the age of 4), grandpa, gram and some other adults...maybe aunts and uncles. But one group actually took up 4 rows of seats! I wish they would allow one parent to board with the underage child. Others have to board with us lowly people.

 

[inkkognito]

I don't have children, but my guess is that it's because people with kids want to make sure the family will be able to sit together without having to beg other people to move. Seats are not assigned on SW, so the longer you wait to board, the less choices you have.

However, when seats are assigned, I agree that pre-boarding with little kids seems odd.

Barb

 

[elmo2wdw]

Thanks! I agree that preboarding with a little one may seem to be harder becasue they are confined longer but I would rather have him buckled in then chasing him around the airport!