SW Gate Change and Your Place in Line!

[inkkognito]

Ever wonder what happens when you've spent an hour in the A line as the first person and your Southwest flight had a gate change? It happened to me yesterday! And take my word for it, it's a free-for-all.

Ironically, there was a gate change at another gate across the way, and the agent had everyone troop in an orderly fashion to the new gate, maintaining their places in the A, B, and C lines. But at our gate, they annouced it and everyone just sprinted (I think they were overly anxious because we were already well into a big delay). Being first originally, everyone else was in front of me so I was almost last in the new line. But I still got an aisle seat in row 5.

But then our new plane had a mechanical problem and we all had to get off! We made it away from the gate, but then we had to return, and it wasn't something that could be fixed quickly. Since we had all handed in our lettered boarding passes, we were handed sequential numbers as we exited. The people in the front were A, middle were B, and back was C. Since there was no way to tell who had what originally, I guess they figured that most As sit in the front and Cs end up in the back. I ended up as the second person in the new A line.

It might sound like a mob scene, but actually it wasn't too bad. No air rage; people were pretty understanding, since the weather was compounding things and it was all pretty much beyond Southwest's control (the weather is what made them switch us to the "bad" plane). But just remember that nothing in line is certain...you could be first in the A line and end up at the end

Barb

 

[dudspizza]

sounds like a mess to deal with. It also sounds like having assigned seats would make things a lot easier...... there was a ton of potential for some really made people in your situation... especially if I had an A and decided to sit in the back and then ended up with a C.

Duds

 

[Chip 'n Dale Express]

On my last flight out of Orlando, I had a final exam prior to the flight. I ended up arriving late to the airport, only about 75 minutes prior to my flights departure time. The Skycaps and the desk were both mobbed with HUGE lines. I chose the inside line, and it did move VERY quick. Much faster than the HUGE security line that I got stuck in as well. At any rate, I didn't get to my gate until about 10 minutes prior to boarding, so I was close to last in the A line. (gotta love online checkin)

Anyhoo, the point of my long babble is that despite being last in the A line, I was still able to snag the left exit row, window seat. (Not quite sure how that happened to still be empty... I guess everyone had kids or wanted front) And when the C people were boarding, there were still empty rows in the back of the plane... but of course, some families would rather split up (and loudly complain about it) than walk to the back of the plane and stay together. (Actually, if I were the son of that lady, I would have rathered to sit away from her too, so can't really blame the kid... lol)

 

[inkkognito]

That surprised me, too...I don't know about the exit row, but I was amazed that I got a 5th row aisle seat when I was at the end of the A line. That's probably about where I would have sat anyway, even if I was first. I ended up choosing an exit row when we finally boarded the plane that took us to Chicago only because I wanted to be able to lean against the window to sleep but still be able to use the restroom without tripping over my seatmates (I was second in the A line that time, so even with all the preboards, I had my choice of exit seats). Ironically, I had to sit the whole flight anyway because it was so turbulent...they were never able to turn off the seatbelt sign, and even the flight attendants had to be seated most of the time.
Barb

 

[gw_lit]

sounds like a mess to deal with. It also sounds like having assigned seats would make things a lot easier...... there was a ton of potential for some really made people in your situation... especially if I had an A and decided to sit in the back and then ended up with a C.

Duds

And if you ended up with a C, you'd probably end up right in back again... which is where you decided to sit when you had an A. So, what's the difference?

It really isn't bad, I've had the same thing happen before on Southwest. I had a problem on an airline with assigned seats where they had to switch plane types due to a mechanical problem. They had to re-issue boarding passes to everyone since the plane was configured differently, I think it was from a 737 with 3-3 seating to an MD-80 with 3-2 seating. Talk about a nightmare! I was really missing Southwest on that trip!