I am an A-Lister! Not sure I like it....

A-Lister ...nothing to do with Scoble or blogs, silly!

A Southwest Airlines A-Lister.

I checked in on-line my family on Thursday afternoon for a Friday flight - as I usually do 24 hours prior. And I was surprised we were boarding numbers 51-54. Unusual - I said everyone must have waited for the magic hour and pressed enter before I did.

Then I noticed on my Southwest profile, I was a few flights short of the new A-List they had launched that very day. This could be a disaster - bunch of middle seats on future flights.

So, I started scheming and booked 4 flights on one day in December. All 45 minute flights on one Saturday - total cost around $ 200. That would definitely get me on to the A-List.

But curious, I called Southwest customer service to ask how the assignment process works. Here's a rough description. 36 hours before a flight they look at the passenger manifest and assign blocks of boarding sequence numbers.  Those on a new category of business select fares get  the first 15-20 seat numbers. Next, A-Listers get 20-30 seats. Then come passengers who are neither business select fares or A-List but who check in on-line starting 24 hours before get the next lot. Finally, those who check in at airport get the last assignments.

Still with me?

Then she goes, of course many flights may only have 2 business select and 10 A-Listers, so do not be disheartened because even though your assignment may be 52, you may be 20th in line to board. Sure enough yesterday, on the flight, we were in that range and we got a row of 3 and an aisle seat adjoining.

But I started thinking - wow. Why this much complexity? Southwest has always been about simplicity. Prior to 2001, they issued re-usable plastic boarding cards. And their frequent flyer program was real simple. Now they have many more fare types. More complicated award levels. Heck, may be they will even introduce first class seating and start behaving like the Northwests of the world? God forbid.

Yesterday morning, as I checked status of our flight. I noticed on my profile. "You are on the A-List!". They have given me a complimentary 6 month privilege since I was already close.

I am still going to waste that Saturday flying all over Florida and make sure I get the A-List for 12 months. Oh, in the meantime Delta tries to bribe me. You are close to the next mileage threshold level - 2 round trips before end of year would do it.  Get there and we give you a Crown Room membership for free - about a $ 300 value.

So my mind goes scheming. How do I optimize to the goals on both airlines? This time of the year many frequent fliers go through similar gyrations to reach their "elite" level milestones. A surreal process I thought I had long escaped from.

Hey, may be we can all use the new optimization algorithms Southwest has developed -)

Update: BusinessWeek provides more perspectives on Southwest's changes