Southwest seating: Love it or hate it?

— -- Announced changes in Southwest Airlines' fabled "cattle call" boarding process brought swift and strong reaction Wednesday from travelers.

"Hurray for Southwest," says William Krueger of Louisville, Tenn. "Again, they put the customer first."

Not so wild about the proposed change was frequent-traveler Mark Nolte of Philadelphia, who never much cared for Southwest's boarding practices anyway.

"I would rather walk cross-country than fly Southwest," Nolte says. "That whole process of seating is absolutely a mess."

At Southwest headquarters in Dallas Wednesday morning, CEO Gary Kelly made the giant discounter's long-awaited announcement about the future of its unusual practice of letting passengers grab the best seat available once they get on board.

Open seating stays, Kelly said. But starting in early November, Southwest will make a change that will eliminate the long lines that form at the airport gate as passengers divide themselves into the A, B and C boarding groups.

The boarding groups stay, too, but each passengers will, at check-in, be assigned a number. The number gives each member of the boarding groups a position in line for boarding the plane, eliminating the need to start standing in line early.

That such a tweak in procedures should prompt strong reactions shouldn't be surprising. Southwest boards more passengers than any of its competitors. It carried 96.3 million passengers in 2006, counting twice those who made connections between two Southwest flights. When the distance those passengers traveled is factored in, Southwest is the USA's No. 5 airline.

Frequent-traveler Christine Scott of Gaithersburg, Md., says she finds Southwest's open-seating system stressful, and the pending change will only add to that. It makes even more important the need to check in online 24 hours ahead of time to avoid a bad seat, she says.

If Southwest really wants to do customers a favor, Scott suggests, why not just give them a seat at booking time? For now, Scott says, she's happy paying a slightly higher fare on another carrier so that she can avoid worrying where she'll sit on the plane.