Well, maybe not madness, but …
After the pre-holiday episode, we were attentive to the Early Boarding that should have been working for our flight home. Our flight’s at 10:55a, but we didn’t want to take any chances of forgetting in the New Years Day rush.
- 10:53: Fire up the Southwest web page. Flight reservation shows up under “Travel” in the sidebard. There’s a button under it to “Check In Online”.
- 10:55: Refresh. Still there.
- 10:59: Refresh. Still there.
- 11:03: Refresh. Still there. Check Margie’s email. No notification.
- 11:04: Click the check-in button, Get another full screen showing the reservation, and our names say “EB” next to them, but there’s no seating info but there’s another button that says “Check In”. Click that. Boarding passes pull up (A27-29). Print them.
Go back to the home screen. Refresh it. It all looks exactly the same. I.e., there’s no indication still that we’ve checked in. Even though we clearly have, because I have the printed boarding passes in my hot little hands. The sidebard still shows under “Travel” our flight and a button to “Check In Online.” Walking through the steps is identical.
So, did Early Bird check-in status work? Um … maybe? The seats are darned good for 10 minutes after the 24 hour clock started. But there’s still no indication that the EB status did anything … or any indication we’ve checked in.
Bad interface. And certainly not something that provides positive feedback for using the EB service again, even though it seems to have worked. Maybe.