Nikil Viswanathan ’10 MS ’12’s website, checkintomyflight.com, has received a cease-and-desist order from Southwest Airline’s attorneys, according to Palo Alto Online. The website automatically checks users in 24 hours before their scheduled departure to ensure the valued A pass seating level in the airline’s open seating scheme.

The site was officially launched on Oct. 2. By Oct. 18, Southwest had emailed Viswanathan the cease-and-desist letter.

Viswanathan told Palo Alto Online that he will take the website down Oct. 24 to avoid facing a lawsuit from the airline. As of time of publication, the website remains functional.

Southwest’s terms of agreement prohibit the use of any “deep-link, page-scrape, crawl, index, spider, click spam, macro programs, Internet agent, or other automatic device program, algorithm or methodology which does the same things, to use, access, copy, acquire information, generate impressions or clicks, input information, store information, search, generate searches or monitor any portion of the Southwest Airlines sites or Company information.”