PIT - LAS Southwest Flight

The drop-off in visitation is due to the millions of people who don't want to visit a country whose leader talks about annexing them/bombing them/seizing their territory/slapping tariffs on them.

We're not exactly the world's favorite country right now. And since we don't offer anything unique, many folks worldwide are spending their vacation money and time elsewhere.

As far as domestic visitation is concerned, if you take $1000 away from every American household, as Trump's tariffs have done, a certain number of those people will decide they can't afford a Vegas vacay any more. Lowering people's discretionary income by even a few percent can greatly affect vacation decisions and destinations.

I realize that the above statements might be construed as POLITICS ICK ICK ICK ICK ICK, but despite such a knee-jeek reaction, they're not about politics at all. They're about the present economic realities.

I just did a Southwest flight.  One thing different was how they did "Boarding Groups".  

I had made the reservations for both me and Connie.  Separate reservations, done at the same time, same $$ class.  Each paid with our own SW cc.  I selected one 'tier' up from the basic, for which I was able to select what looked like good seats, aisle 7 out and aisle 8 back.  Not extra leg room but sufficiently up front.  I thought I had mistakenly selected bulkhead seats after 'first class' but that was not the case.  There was not a traditional 'first class' designation like on other airlines.

She likes window, I don't mind the middle, so that's what we got.

Here is the thing that was different:  When we got there, her boarding pass said Group 3, mine said Group 5.  Boarding starts with Group 1 and so on.  What? 

I asked about it.  The answer had to do at least partly with her window seating and my middle seating.  The gate agent said "They board from the window seats inward to speed things up.  I think it may have achieved that a little.  

As it happened, someone in a higher $$ class had the aisle seat on the way out, while a pre-board had it on the way back.  Each had to get up to allow me to my middle seat, slowing that process a by perhaps 10-15 seconds.   It was fine.  We did leave on time.

Candy

I flew Southwest from Denver to the Dominican Republic, with a layover in Orlando, for 4 legs total. We have the Southwest Priority Visa, with a $229 annual fee, which I think is a great value if you fly Southwest.

When you book your flights, logging into the primary credit card account holder's Southwest account, you are automatically able to choose your seats up to the preferred category on any fare level. I booked "Basic Fare" for all legs of the trip. My wife and I like to have side-by-side aisle seats when we fly, and I was able to book them in the "Preferred" category on all legs of the flight. The preferred seats are closer to the front, behind the Extra Leg Room seats.

Then you can grab any seats you want for free 48 hours before takeoff, so with 4 legs, I had to do that 4 times, with my wife's help. On all 4 flights, we were able to upgrade to extra leg room seats for free.  DEN to ORL, we had aisle 3 side-by-side, and ORL to DOM, we had exit row aisle seats row 16. Coming back from DOM to ORL, I had an aisle seat row 2, and my wife had an aisle seat row 3, and ORL to DEN we had exit row 16 middle and aisle.

Overall, it worked out well; we paid basic fare and flew extra leg room on all the flights. Probably a $480 value over paying up front for the seats. I don't know if it will work out this way going forward, as people figure out the new system.

As a side note, Global Entry was shut down in Orlando, but it didn't make any difference; they weren't busy, and we breezed through customs. Just got hung up in a line to re-scan our luggage to check it for the final flight.