[sixbrx]

My wife and I had a recent bad experience on SouthWest, where we boarded the plane at Love Field in Dallas and then were made to wait 2.5 hours on the tarmac, because their IT system had a different passenger count than what the crew counted. After several attempts at counting again, they ended up having to go to each passenger row by row with a manifest in hand, and verify the passenger boarding pass and driver's license. I think aside from their IT system problems, this situation was made worse because as a passenger you don't have an assigned seat, so it's not obvious when someone is missing or a seat has two or more contending passengers.