- Southwest plans to offer pricier seats with extra legroom and end open seating on its planes.
- The shifts are the most major in the airline’s more than five decades of flying.
- Southwest expects to start selling seats with the new cabin option next year.
Guess they’re upgrading to Windows 95 and getting some new features in the process!
I hate them removing open seating though, which airline experts have found is basically the fastest, easiest system for boarding planes. Obviously just to allow per-sest pricing, the bane of travellers everywhere.
Open seating must make up time at the end when there’s fewer choices, because my experience has been it’s just as bad as people trying to find their assigned seat. People come into the plane and either stop to ponder where to pick a seat, or the pick the first seat they can and take their time putting stuff up, blocking the rest. I would think assigned seats and start boarding the rows back to front, or maybe stagger the loading, would be faster.
“Although our unique open seating model has been a part of Southwest Airlines since our inception, our thoughtful and extensive research makes it clear this is the right choice — at the right time — for
our Customers, our People, andour Shareholders,” CEO Bob Jordan said in a news release Thursday.
FTFY
Southwest has been shown to have the shortest turnaround time of all the airlines due to open seating. IIRC when other airlines were failing and merging, Southwest stayed independent and even profitable. This is just another example of short term gain being prioritized over long term strategy.
Good, the lines and purchase upgrades were out of control.
Yeah I wonder which sentiment will win out. Personally, I thought SouthWest was on the decline with consumers due to their psychopathic boarding policies.
Even for work travel, I’ve been noticing colleagues shitting on SouthWest and realizing it sucks. Playing this ridiculous game trying to fight for a seat, people AND STAFF ignoring boarding number guidelines with no consequences, it’s fucking ridiculous. Delta offers much better travel contracts.
All that effort just to sit in the middle because you didn’t pay $300 extra for the ultra omega line skip. Might as well fly a normal airline and pick your desired seat or pay a little to sit in “comfort” class behind business.
Every flight I would see people frustrated that they paid $100 extra for whatever new fast pass they rolled out only to find out there are 5 boarding groups ahead of them with even faster passes.
Bad for work travel, bad for personal travel, what else is left lol.
Cool. Still never flying again unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s still loud, It’s still expensive, I still have to sit in an uncomfortable airplane seat and I doubt the “extra legroom” is worth the price.
One of the few draws of Southwest was that it was one price for everybody. I guess that’s not true anymore.
Southwest was, and may still be, my favorite airline. Not that I’ve traveled more than 3 times in my life, but the fact that southwest was always at the top for employee satisfaction. I had always respected that. It’s strange to me that they would eliminate a process that is a prime factor in driving sales… But… Money…
I’ve flown with them quite a bit and while I initially liked them, they’re absolutely shitty if they ever make changes to a flight. I’ve booked direct 4 hour flights that they then cancel and stick me on a 12 hour flight with 3 layovers instead with no way to change it other than literally sitting on hold for 2 hours. Their website is absolute garbage and does not allow you to update or change anything on your flight even though it’s supposed to (which I just found out from Crowdstrike is likely because their whole system runs on Windows 3.1).
I’ve also had the gate agents get nasty and refuse to allow us to board early when they ask if anyone needs extra time even though we have a child with disabilities because apparently she doesn’t look disabled enough.
We also always check-in the second you’re allowed to 24 hours before the flight but still somehow always manage to get stuck in boarding group C which means we can’t sit with our above mentioned child if the plane is already full and there aren’t at least 2 seats next to each other. You can pay them significantly more to get seated early though. 🙄
Out of all the flights we’ve taken, Alaska has always been the best in terms of service and experience and typically the most reasonable on price.
Southwest is good if you’re traveling alone and don’t mind getting stuck sitting between a drunk couple who are fighting and rapidly approaching getting physical (this has happened to me) and want to save money on your baggage.
At 27, I’m a bit of a seasoned traveler. I used to fly places all the time when I was a kid with my mom and older brother, and when I was a teenager I was lucky enough to go to Europe for a long trip. Now I drive everywhere for work and that means driving all over the damn south-southeast US. I’d much rather fly half the time, because it’s faster, easier to deal with because of the lack of jackasses on the road, and I can chill on the flight.
Of course driving does have its perks sometimes.
