Southwest sues 'A-group' websites

Southwest Airlines, everyone's favorite luxury air carrier, is taking aim at online companies that help travelers get better seats by handling their check-in and trying to get them into Southwest's "A" seating group. Southwest said it started noticing the online services in September, and more and more have shown up since then; the airline has contacted more than a dozen websites and asked them to stop issuing boarding passes, and now it's suing BoardFirst, one of the services that refused to quit.

Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said the airline is afraid of losing its seating inventory and is worried about passengers handing over personal information to third-party groups that aren't affiliated with the airline. And passengers who don't use the services are complaining that it's harder to get into the "A" group these days, even with online check-in up to 24 hours in advance of the flight time.

The situation has brought up the old debate over whether Southwest's seating system — under which people are assigned to boarding groups based on when they check in, rather than being assigned specific seats — is a good way to handle passengers. Houstonist has never had much of a problem with it: Though we were never interested enough to arrive at the airport 36 hours ahead of time so we could be first in line at the Southwest gate, we didn't mind taking our chances with online check-in. Even if we ended up in the "A" group and got the best seat on the plane, chances were still good that a 600-pound person would end up sitting next to us and drooling on our shoulder all the way to Chicago Midway.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said last month that the airline was reworking its computer system to give the option of assigning seats, but he said no decision has been made to change the reservation policy — yet. No change will happen before 2008, he said.