This apparently came out a few weeks ago, but I must have missed the news when it first came out.  If you haven’t heard, the Southwest early bird check in cost has increased as of March 16, 2016.  The Southwest early bird check in cost used to be $12.50, but now will set you back $15 for each one way flight.  Even though the news is about a month old, you can still see that the Southwest Early Bird check in FAQ page still shows a cost of $12.50 (as of the date of this post), so they must be still updating it everywhere on their site.
Southwest Early Bird check in is a way that you can check in before boarding opens up for the general public. Â If you buy Southwest Early Bird check in, you will be automatically checked in and your boarding pass assigned 36 hours before your flight leaves (12 hours (ish) before the rest of the people on your flight can check in).
With the increase in Southwest early bird check in cost, should you buy it?
Long-time readers will remember that my very first miles and points expenditure was a flight from Chicago to Reno with my family of 8.  We used 170,000 Rapid Rewards points to book those flights and that was the first time we had ever flown Southwest.  I looked at the Southwest early bird check in cost and was not sure if that would be a good deal.
Eventually, after reading some reports from other folks with experience flying Southwest, we decided not to pay the Southwest Early Bird check in cost.  The Southwest family boarding policy does allow families traveling with kids 4 years or under to board after the A group and before the B group flies (so you will board after the first 60 people).  In my experience, as long as you don’t mind sitting towards the back of the plane, there will be NO problem at all finding seats together.
If you’re flying with older kids or by yourself, you just need to set yourself an alarm for 24 hours before your flight departs. Â That is when check in happens, and in my experience, as long as you do that, you should also be fine. Â It gets a little trickier the more seats (and confirmation numbers) you have, but one trick you can do is to pre-fill all of them out on Southwest’s check in page so you can quickly hit check in when the 24 hour window opens.
So I would NOT pay the increased Southwest early bird check in cost (of course, I wouldn’t have paid the Southwest early bird check in cost when it was only $12.50!).
What about you?  Do you think the Southwest early bird check in cost is worth paying?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
You are about 1 month late with this news!
As I mentioned in the post!
Inaccurate title seeing as how the increase has already happened. Also, as you noted, incredibly late with the news. Why even publish this post unless you’re fishing for clicks? I usually like your content…
People who comment to ask you why you wrote a post baffle me. Anyway, Early Bird last week gave me B33 and B13 on two flights. As a solo traveler, it makes a lot more sense to pay $40 to upgrade at the gate then $15 for the Early Bird that everybody else is getting. (With a family of 8, maybe not so much!)
I agree. If you already knew about it, then don’t click on the link :-). Personally I had not seen the news from back in March, and it looks like a decent amount of people also had not heard
I too had missed this news from before, so thanks for the catch. Happens though I’m souring on Southwest over the past year, even as the spouse still has the companion pass through end of this year.
1. Fee increases like this suggest that Southwest is starting down the Frontier/Spirit model pathway…
2. Southwest has been quietly ending too many otherwise profitable routes from “smaller” airports — while working to build more flights from the majors. (irritates a lot of us who “loyally” flew SWA out of Richmond, Virginia, where as of this week, they ended the popular direct flights to Orlando, a much better hub than ATL…. for no rational reason whatsoever — other than they’re moving to the Frontier model of dumping “small” airports. )
3. I’m quite tired of the Southwest “cattle car” approach to boarding and seating…. (esp. at the gate areas in ATL) Southwest knows full well they can get away with hiking the fees for those wanting to pay for early boarding becuz — it’s increasingly popular. 4 years ago, when I first started flying SWA, I could log on 24 hours before my flight departed and quite likely get an “A” boarding group slot. Now, on some flights, I’m lucky to get in the lower half of the “B” group…. (and if I’m late, risk having to sit in the miserable middle seats on the 737 cattle cars AND be separated from the traveling spouse)
4. Southwest likes to brag that they don’t have “change fees.” In practice, however, that’s a bit of misdirection, as from most airports, you’ll likely pay double to triple in points what you paid for the original flight, if you’re trying to make a change “close in” (as in within 2 weeks of your flight). If you’re lucky to be flying from one of the SWA hubs (BWI or LAS), not so much…. (and yes, at least you have the “option” to try to find a reasonable switch or cancel).
All-in-all, I no longer “luv” LUV. (SWA). Even if I can still get another 2 yr round of the SWA companion pass next year, I’m increasingly thinking to take a pass…. and fly Jetblue, even Delta. (sic)
Good thing I didn’t listen to the haters who whined about why I posted this :-). I agree that Southwest has this mindset that they have “low” fares, but their fares are often not very low.
You got 2 positive comments. Hardly affirmation of a smart post. My point stands, however, as the wording of the post was intentionally misleading. The price already increasED… it’s not increasING.