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Southwest looks to improve boarding areas

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Southwest looks to improve boarding areas

SmarterTravel

There's a 95 percent chance Senior Editor Christine Sarkis is thinking about travel right now. Follow her on Instagram @postcartography and Twitter @ChristineSarkis.

Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

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By now, you’ve probably heard about Southwest’s new boarding procedure, which aims to cut down on competitive line-standing while preserving open seating onboard. But that’s not the only big change: Now that people will be spending less time standing in long A, B, or C boarding lines and more time sitting before departure, Southwest is making an effort to improve its boarding areas.

You can find images and all the details on Southwest’s blog. Here’s a brief rundown of the improvements scheduled for all Southwest boarding areas in the first half of 2008:

  • More comfortable seats
  • Power stations with outlets and USB ports
  • Family areas with kid-sized tables and chairs
  • Family-friendly TV programs
  • Television monitors to indicate boarding groups

I love imagining the conversation that spawned these ideas. The one someone kicked off by wondering, “So … what are passengers going to do if they’re not standing in line anymore?” And this list of improvements, while not particularly revolutionary, will go far toward making the brand-new Southwest pre-boarding experience more pleasant.

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