boarding school

Southwest Airlines has been talking for ages now about getting rid of the cattle call and assigning seats on the planes.

They have announced their new boarding procedure—with the assertion, "you spoke and we listened." What morons liked the freaking cattle call?

The claim to have done away with the cattle-call feeling, but still board via open seating based on who prints out their boarding pass first. Basically, instead of camping out in lines for decent seats, you have to make damn sure you are in front of a computer exactly 24 hours in advance, and then wait in smaller subsets of lines.

I suppose this is an improvement, of sorts. But it certainly isn't a solution, or in any way more convenient than just reserving a seat. In fact, it sounds much more complex.

I'm all for out-of-the-box thinking, but really, is common sense "order a seat, get to the airport in a reasonable time instead of hours early, and board by aft seats first" such a complex, problematic model that it needs a radical new approach, displays, aisles, etc?

I'm just sayin', the new system is so different and non-intuitive for the great unwashed typical Southwest passenger, that they had to devise an animated, online "boarding school" to, basically, tell people how to wait in line in a whole new way.

I shudder to think of the years and expense that went into devising this plan. Time and money perhaps better spent figuring out how to secure planes without the obvious sham and inconvenience of the TSA methods and their war on moisture.