Bell, a Phoenix resident, says she was the creator of a new industry that was spawned by Southwest's unique flight boarding procedure.

Southwest is the biggest operator at McCarran International Airport, so thousands of Las Vegas customers are well aware of the airline's procedure: 24 hours before flight time, passengers can go online to check in and receive a boarding pass. The A boarding pass gives passengers the right to be in the first wave of passengers getting on the plane after preboarding children, disabled passengers and their families.

With no assigned seats, the right to board first is coveted.

The B boarding pass gets you in the next wave. And, the dreaded C pass gets you on last, when most of the aisle and window seats and most of the overhead bin space are taken.

About 11 months ago, Bell built a small business around Southwest's boarding system. For $5, her service at BoardFirst.com would do the legwork for passengers who want to be in the A group, but don't have time to access southwest.com or a computer to do it. If Bell's company doesn't get you an A pass, you don't pay.

On an average day, Bell said she would fill about 100 orders. All seemed good until earlier this year.

Bell said in December, she got to meet Southwest co-founder Herb Kelleher, who gave her a hug and applauded her entrepreneurial spirit. Three weeks later, she got a cease-and-desist order from Southwest.

"I hired an attorney and decided to fight them because I wasn't doing anything that was in violation of their policies," Bell said.

But two cease-and-desist letters and a policy change later, Bell was sued in federal district court in Dallas. Bell hired a Dallas-based trademark attorney to defend her company about three weeks ago and when she was initially served by the court, she had 90 days to respond to the suit. She'll probably wait right up to the end of that 90 days because the summer travel season has begun and publicity about the lawsuit has made Bell's service more popular than ever.

"I get about 150 customers on a good day and since the lawsuit, there have been a lot more 150-customer days," she said.

So why is the Goliath — Southwest, a company with 30,000 employees — suing a David like BoardFirst LLC, which has two employees?

Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King told the Associated Press that the airline fears that it would lose control of its seating inventory and that the airline didn't want its customers to turn over credit-card information to a company that isn't connected with the airline.

Bell says that's preposterous, since Southwest distributes about 145,000 A boarding passes every day and she retrieves about 100 to 150 of them. As far as the credit-card information, Bell's customers voluntarily turn over their card numbers to her so that she can make her $5.

King also said that the industry Bell started has become more popular and that other Internet sites have surfaced offering the same or similar services. Some Southwest customers began to complain that they weren't able to get A passes as easily as they once did, leading Southwest to clamp down on Bell's company.

Bell said the reason A boarding passes aren't as readily available is due to Southwest's own policy change enabling passengers to retrieve all boarding passes on every connecting flight on their itineraries.

For example, a passenger flying from Las Vegas to Fort Myers, Fla., would have to connect through Chicago. When Las Vegas passengers check in for the Chicago flight, they also get boarding passes for the Chicago-Fort Myers flight. So anybody on a connecting flight could potentially get an A pass before those flying from Chicago to Fort Myers.

Bell concurs that the industry she says she invented is growing because she said she has had to hire attorneys to close down imitators who have used the exact wording from her Internet site to set up their own companies.

Some similar sites have different methods of operation. For example, alineonline.com offers a similar service but it secures the boarding pass for free — for now. That company's site implies that it eventually would charge for the service.

Bell has her own theory about why Southwest decided to file suit against her.

"I think they were a little embarrassed that we were pointing out that not everybody likes the way they do things," she said.

True, Southwest has announced that it is contemplating implementing assigned seating. Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly said the company is developing the means to assign seats but that no decisions have been reached and the earliest the airline could do that would be 2008.

The traveling public is split on assigned seating on Southwest. Some say they fly Southwest because they prefer the first-come, first-served boarding system, while others say they don't fly Southwest because they don't like the "cattle call" environment that occurs when passengers board.

The existing system enables Southwest to load planes faster, which is paramount to the company's strategy of moving its planes out quickly, one of many things Southwest does differently than the rest of the aviation industry that analysts say have led to profitability and success.

But one thing is a certainty if Southwest elects to assign seats: Kate Bell would be out of business.

But in the meantime, her tiny company will continue to operate unless the courts agree with Southwest's position.