a group of people standing in an airplane

Southwest Airlines is abandoning its traditional business model and introducing redeye flights, assigned seating, and premum options including extra-legroom seats as it seeks to adjust to an ongoing structural change in air travel demand.

Southwest Airlines Ends Open Seating

For years, seats have been first-come, first-served on Southwest Airlines. With such open seating have come shenanigans like the request of exponentially more wheelchairs to board than to disembark as well as some shady seat-saving practices that flight attendants turned a blind eye to.

After listening carefully to Customers and conducting extensive research, Southwest decided it will assign seats and offer premium seating options on all flights.

Southwest cites an internal study that 80% of Southwest customers, and 86% of potential customers, prefer an assigned seat. When a customer stops flying with Southwest and chooses a competitor, open seating is cited as the number one reason for the change.

New Premium Seating Options

While Southwest will not introduce a premium cabin, it will introduce extra legroom seating in the front of the plane:

While specific cabin layout details are still in design, Southwest expects roughly one-third of seats across the fleet to offer extended legroom, in line with that offered by industry peers on narrowbody aircraft.

We do not have further details at this time, though these extra legroom seats will roll out fleetwide over the next year.

Redeye Flights Coming

Thorugh 2017, Southwest used a system that had to be reset each night, forcing all flights to land by 11:00 PM PT. Southwest now uses Amadeus and its recently-signed contracts with both pilots and flight attendants now allow for redeyes.

As of February 13, 2025, Southwest will launch the following redeye flights:

  • Las Vegas (LAS) to Baltimore (BWI)
  • Las Vegas (LAS) to Orlando (MCO)
  • Los Angeles (LAX) to Baltimore (BWI)
  • Los Angeles (LAX) to Nashville (BNA)
  • Phoenix (PHX) to Baltimore (BWI)

Southwest says, “Redeye flying, coupled with continued reductions in turn-time through new technologies and procedures, is expected to provide incremental revenue and cost savings, enabling Southwest to fund nearly all new capacity over the next three years without incremental aircraft capital deployment.”

I would expect many redeyes from Hawaii to be added, making travel on Southwest from the Hawaiian Islands to the East Coast finally available without an overnight on the ground.

Will This Turn Southwest Airlines Around?

It’s fair to ask whether Southwest has flourished over the years because of its unique business model or despite it.

Speaking personally, the open-seating policy was a huge turnoff for me and since I do not generally check bags, the two free bags made no difference to me.

Southwest CEO and President Bob Jordan hints this is the first of many changes:

“We have been building purposefully to this change as part of a comprehensive upgrade to the Southwest experience as we focus on Customer expectations – and it will unlock new sources of revenue consistent with our laser focus on delivering improved financial performance.”

I think assigned seating and extra-legroom premium seating is a move in the right direction (I’d still love to see a true premium cabin, but that seems a bit too much for the business model). While Southwest’s lack of longhaul flights is still a drawback, these moves should attract more business flyers.

The addition of redeye flights is essential to maximize aircraft utilization and to offer connectivity. I don’t like redeye flights, but I still take them because they maximize your time (even at hte expense of your sleep). Being able to travel from Hawaii to the West Coast or from the West Coast to East Coast overnight will also be attractive to many customers and open up Southwest Airlines as a viable option to Hawaii for many East Coast residents.

While Southwest’s diehard loyalists will not like this, I am hopeful that assigned seating will end wheelchair abuse that in some cases has become comical.

CONCLUSION

Kudos to Southwest Airlines for recognizing that is business model was no longer competitive and introducing changes that should both increase revenue and increase customer satisfaction. The limited route network will still limit my use of Southwest, but these changes make me much more willing to fly on the Dallas-based carrier.

Will these changes make you more likely to fly on Southwest Airlines?


image: Southwest Airlines

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