1. Boarding
Starting tomorrow, November 8, Southwest will be changing to a letter+number boarding process as described at
http://www.southwest.com/makeover/?r...hp_071015_gate and
http://www.southwest.com/help/boardingschool/
This process will essentially eliminate waiting in line. Its most controversial aspect is moving infants and toddlers from pre-boarding to mid-boarding, after the A's.
2. Business Select and Automatic Check-in
Southwest has just announced some Rapid Rewards enhancements aimed at attracting more business travelers. Unlike most such announcements by other programs, this one is not a devaluation in any way. It's great news, not least because it will help Southwest keep its discounted fares low.
The boarding change has enabled Southwest to offer priority check-in, meaning earlier boarding, for its best customers. Southwest is adding a premium fare category called Business Select. It gives you a low A boarding pass and, when you print it, a coupon for a free drink. Business Select also gives you an extra 0.25 Rapid Rewards credit for a short flight (less than 750 miles) and an extra 1 credit for a longer flight. Business Select will cost up to about $30 more than regular full fare, and the number of BS seats (sorry, I couldn't resist that one) will be limited to about 10% of the flight, so that others have a decent shot at getting one of the 60 A's.
If you have 32 flight credits or more, Southwest will reserve an A for you, even if you are flying on a discount fare. The more flight credits you have, the lower the number you will get and the earlier in the sequence you will board. If you have a companion, you will need to save a seat for him or her.
Discount fares will still get full Rapid Rewards credit, and the Companion Pass program is not changing in any way. Whew!
The fare display matrix is being cleaned up by merging the discount fare columns into one column with a price on each flight option. There are now 15 fare classes behind the scenes rather than 8.
Rapid Rewards is adding an option to convert two standard awards to one Freedom Award, which is functionally equivalent to the old awards with blackout dates. If you pay $50 you get a full year on the new award; otherwise the Freedom Award inherits the earlier of the two source award expiration dates. This enhancement is overdue, but presumably Southwest preferred to delay it until customers' memory of the old awards faded sufficiently. Freedom Awards are welcome as a safety net, as long as it doesn't become an excuse to tighten the current capacity controls.
See Southwest's presentation at
http://www.southwest.com/new
3. Schedule
The schedule will open tomorrow morning, probably about 10:00 AM Central time, for travel through May 9, 2008. Prepare your spring break Rapid Rewards travel plans now and be ready to move quickly to grab your award seats.
4. Mile Conversion Bonanza
The other hot news is a mile conversion bonanza. You can now convert 5k Continental or Midwest Airlines miles into 10 Rapid Rewards credits. This is more generous than any conversion we have ever seen, even including the discontinued 350k HHonors award for 100 credits. This is the perfect way to free up those orphan miles, turning CO lead into SWA gold, as it were.
This deal was posted by gleff in his View from the Wing a few weeks back, and people have now completed the conversion successfully. It takes about 2 weeks.
Read the two threads (linked below) very carefully. All the answers you need are there if you look, so don't PM me rather than posting if you still have a question. We'd like to keep this fragile deal below the radar.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=747057
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=747794