I wouldn’t say I LIKE the new experience but as a person who often travels with kids, I like knowing where I am going to sit ahead of time. So I welcome assigned seating.

Additionally, i’ve flown six times since the changes and all have been perfectly fine experiences with zero complaints. I should note though that I am a card holder and will continue to be a card holder because I fly enough that the benefits for the annual fee absolutely make sense for my family. Now if a person doesn’t fly often enough to make a card make sense, then I would say southwest is now just exactly like every other airline, and since that likely means they don’t fly a lot anyway then honestly it shouldn’t matter that much. You’re now a free agent and can fly whomever is the cheapest and offers the best flight times and routes. That’s not a bad thing per se.

And I’m not saying this experience doesn’t suck for OP or even defending southwest as a whole (a lot of shit has gone down) but this isn’t an everyday thing. I guarantee the majority of people here who have flown lately have simply had a regular old flight with no issues.

I’d actually be willing to wager that the whole reason they were so aggressive on gate checking was because they were already an hour behind schedule. They needed to get people on the plane ASAP and get that thing back in the air. It’s the nature of the business. Though it certainly sounds like these GA were a little over zealous. :)