wnbubbleboy
Veteran
Southwest had a high-profile experiment with assigned seating. What happened with that?
Well, it's ongoing. It wasn't so much an experiment as it was a test of the time it takes to board the aircraft. The long-standing theory is that it takes more time to board an aircraft with assigned seating and we had a theory, at least, that we wanted to explore that if the boarding was orderly — in other words, where people were arranged in such a way based on their seat — that it actually might be faster. So we tried a variety of methods. They weren't remarkably different than open seating. Nothing was faster, at least convincingly. They were all roughly the same or slower. We learned what we wanted to learn. We weren't too surprised with the findings, but we have hard facts now to move forward.
In the meantime, we are finishing out the technology construction to be able to assign seats and that will take well into next year before we can have that completed. In the meantime, we're continuing to evaluate that whole boarding and seating process and see if can come up with something that improves customer service and also our efficiency, so no determination has been made yet, mainly because the pacing item is the technology construction.
http://www.inbusinesslasvegas.com/2006/11/17/qa.html
Well, it's ongoing. It wasn't so much an experiment as it was a test of the time it takes to board the aircraft. The long-standing theory is that it takes more time to board an aircraft with assigned seating and we had a theory, at least, that we wanted to explore that if the boarding was orderly — in other words, where people were arranged in such a way based on their seat — that it actually might be faster. So we tried a variety of methods. They weren't remarkably different than open seating. Nothing was faster, at least convincingly. They were all roughly the same or slower. We learned what we wanted to learn. We weren't too surprised with the findings, but we have hard facts now to move forward.
In the meantime, we are finishing out the technology construction to be able to assign seats and that will take well into next year before we can have that completed. In the meantime, we're continuing to evaluate that whole boarding and seating process and see if can come up with something that improves customer service and also our efficiency, so no determination has been made yet, mainly because the pacing item is the technology construction.
http://www.inbusinesslasvegas.com/2006/11/17/qa.html
