Southwest Plans New Boarding System

Southwest Airlines is retiring a waxy piece of airline history: plastic boarding cards.

The low-fare carrier, which doesn’t have assigned seating, is phasing out the reusable colored cards that have been a staple of the airline since its founding three decades ago.

Over the next two weeks, Southwest will shift to an automated system in which passengers will get a paper boarding pass at the ticket counter or at other locations in the airport.

Flying Southwest always has been first come, first seated. That means that travelers must stand in line at the boarding gate to get a numbered plastic boarding card. Travelers then wait for gate personnel to call the 30-passenger group that includes their boarding number.

The cards are one of the quirks that sets Southwest apart from other carriers, and over the years, tens of millions of passengers have endured the ritual and fidgeted with the cards as they waited to board. Some also used the rectangular cards as a bookmark, flyswatter, back scratcher, face fan, a writing surface and, according to Southwest, as a toothpick. The cards also have the name of their color printed on the back, for the colorblind.

But with increased security and long lines at the airport since Sept. 11, waiting in yet one more line for the boarding card became too much of a nuisance, Southwest concluded.

“We’ve not changed our open-seating policy, and we will still board in groups based on when the customer checks in,” Dave Ridley, Southwest’s vice president of ground operations, said in a statement. But now passengers “will stand in only one line, excluding security,” he said.

Under the new system, Southwest passengers can check in either at the ticket counter, skycap counter or the boarding gate, where they’ll be issued a paper boarding pass--much like any other airline. But the pass also will show a letter--A, B or C--which is the airline’s new way of dividing its passengers into three groups. Those with the letter A will go first.