Southwest considers assigned seating

Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2003 | 11:08 a.m.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Southwest Airlines, the busiest commercial passenger carrier at McCarran International Airport, is considering implementing assigned seating, a departure from its first-come, first-served system it has had in place for years.

John Jamotta, director of schedule planning for Southwest, said at an aviation conference that technology has advanced enough that it is no longer cost-prohibitive for the Dallas-based airline to consider allowing passengers to choose in advance where they sit on flights.

Southwest, which serves about 1 million passengers a month at McCarran, boards passengers in groups of 30, with the first people to the airport getting boarding passes designating them as the first on the plane. Once aboard, passengers can sit in whatever open seat is available.

The airline has had the policy in effect for years, boarding passengers with plastic numbered cards until last year when the airline switched to boarding passes marked A, B and C.

In an aviation forecast conference presented by The Boyd Group, Evergreen, Colo., Jamotta said airline executives plan to discuss changing the policy to enable passengers to select seats in advance.

"It's not a cost question anymore," Jamotta said. "It's a customer service issue."

Jamotta gave no details on how or when such a system would be implemented by the airline.

"As the technology has rolled forward, we have found that this is something we may be able to do," he said.

In his presentation on the state of the industry and the airline since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Jamotta said Southwest has embarked on a slow-growth strategy, but that the carrier expects to return to a more aggressive growth mode next year. In an interview after his presentation, Jamotta said Las Vegas figures prominantly in the airline's growth plans, even after recent flight additions at McCarran have made Las Vegas the largest operation the airline has.

"We're bullish on our opportunities in Las Vegas," Jamotta said. "It's a powerful part of our system."

Jamotta attributed Southwest's success in Las Vegas to the airline's low fare structure and customers' expectations of value when visiting the city. An advertising campaign airing on Nashville television stations encourages people to buy tickets to Las Vegas on Southwest so they can have more to spend after they arrive.

Southwest later this year plans to announce a new city on its route map and begin service in 2004. But as far as Las Vegas is concerned, Jamotta said he expects the airline will continue its "connect-the-dots" strategy of adding more point-to-point flights to locations already served by Southwest, and also adding flight frequency.

"On Friday nights, you can't get get a seat out of Los Angeles to Las Vegas," Jamotta said.

Southwest already offers 15 nonstop round trips a day between Los Angeles International Airport and Las Vegas, the sixth busiest route in the airline's system.

McCarran is now the busiest airport in Southwest's system. By Southwest's count, the company has 185 flights a day in and out of Las Vegas, counting operations that run five or six times a week as a daily flight. McCarran, which uses a different method to count, says Southwest has about 170 flights a day.