Southwest and kids

The kids thing scares the daylights out of me. I can barely function in a "normal" relationship with jobs, athletics, activities, volunteering and the rest of it; how kids fit in baffles me.

That said, I noticed a post by Martin Bishop at Landor about Southwest, and it reminded me of a letter a co-worker sent and received regarding a recent change to Southwest's pre-boarding policy. (I agree in general that Southwest's claim to fame is treating all equally, or, at least, appearing to - I'm curious to see what Martin thinks of the new intercontinental all-business class airlines which are trying to mimic the one-class low fare program, but for business passengers - but that's a subject for another time).

My coworker has children, and he also flies Southwest religiously. He was horrified to find out that pre-boarding for families with small children was to end, according to early reports, as in some instances when away from a computer (at the in-laws) he can't print out boarding passes.  And with small kids, sitting together is important.

Being a passionate Southwest customer, he wrote a letter. And Southwest showed off, as usual, what an exemplary company it is and why it has one of the best brands - able to combine value and high-class customer service all the time, no excuses.

He received a prompt reply on nice company letterhead (not the typical United Airlines almost-as-cheap-as-newsprint letterhead) addressed to him, explaining the change. The pre-boarding policy for families would continue, it said, but families would be moved from before the A boarding group to before the B boarding group. The reason for this was primarily to speed up the loading and unloading of the flight, as families in the front rows take longer to get ready to leave, making everyone - especially efficient and rushed business passengers, stuck behind them - slower to exit the plane. He sits in the back of the plane normally, and there are always seats available after just A's have boarded, so for him it really means little will change. Also he pointed out that it offends him when traveling for work when families up front stall the whole process of getting off the plane, because they were selfish and sat up front, so he's actually a fan of the new policy.

Of course it makes excellent business sense as well. One of the reasons Southwest is so inexpensive is because (as of when the HBR case was written, at least) the company managed to bring aircraft turnaround time at the gates down to 18 minutes from - literally - hours, thus freeing up fantastic amounts of working capital. There were many aspects of this, from not transferring luggage to other carriers, not accepting luggage transfers, not having many connecting flights anyway (though that has changed), not having food service, not having beverage carts, not having sophisticated, overly complex computer systems with assigned seats and complicated boarding processes, having grounds crews clean planes on a more sane basis, etc. It all combined to drastically reduce turn around. And, if this change shaves even 1 minute off the turnaround time, it would shave yet another ~5%. Might even result in cheaper tickets for all of us.

Comments

[Martin Bishop]

I'm not sure about all-business class airlines. I've not flown on one so far and, actually, since we don't get to fly business class on domestic flights for work, I'm not likely to. (I'm way too cheap/poor to pay more than coach on my own dime.)

So I guess my question would be whether there's enough of a market to support a lot of players in this space. A nice niche but one that's difficult to defend if everyone jumps in.