Boarding the Inaugural Southwest Flight

Flight #614 was scheduled to depart New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Chicago-Midway Airport at 8:45AM with an arrival time of 10:40AM.

Customers lined up in typical Southwest fashion, by boarding letter and number in front of spaced steel columns.

The first passenger, holding Boarding Group A, Position 01, was Darrell Johnson, who had purchased a Business Select seat and was connecting in Chicago to Sacramento.

First Man to Board the first LGA-MDW flight

Inaugural Passenger, Flight 614

We keep wondering, looking at the people we saw on both the outbound and the inbound flight.

Were they New Yorkers who had discovered the newness of Southwest? Were they Chicagoans coming back on an established airline? Or were they people who just looked for the best price and didn’t care on which airline they flew?

We didn’t want to risk offending our hosts by bothering our fellow passengers too much. The same went for the flight attendants.