I like cattle?

The Dallas Morning News reports that Southwest Airlines will launch a pilot program today (pun intended) to assign seats to passengers instead of herding everyone like cattle. Starting today, some Southwest flights from San Diego will give out assigned seats.

(As a side note, the newspaper also says Southwest gets wedding invitations from passengers who met through open seating. How does one invite an airliner to a wedding? Is the ceremony held in a hangar? Haha.)

While Southwest experiments with assigned seating, Northwest Airlines is doing the exact opposite:

Northwest is testing a new policy in which coach passengers have seat assignments but board in the order they line up at the gate.

To sum up: Southwest is trying to be more like Northwest. And Northwest is trying to be more like Southwest.

Comments

Josh said…
Won't somebody please think of Sacramento? They're an innocent victim, caught in the middle of this lame joke.
July 10, 2006
Anonymous said…
I prefer Southwest's method simply because it provies decent training if the world ever descends into anarchy. First-time Southwest fliers are horrified by the system. You'd think they were going to have to jump on the outisde of a bus.
July 10, 2006
Anonymous said…
Crap, I'm flying SWA into (and out of) San Diego this weekend. I wonder if I like cattle enough to be herded into a specific seat ...
July 10, 2006
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