Whether it’s something you “luv” or hate, the absence of assigned seats on Southwest Airlines has become a decades-long fixture. However, the more than 50-year-old legacy of open seating for the Dallas-based carrier will soon end.
Southwest announced on Thursday that it will do away with its longtime egalitarian, choose-your-own-seat adventure, all in an attempt to boost revenue and adapt to shifting traveler tastes.
The airline’s distinctive group-boarding model, whereby passengers race for a seat once on the aircraft, will bid us adieu. In its place, Southwest will assign seats and unveil “premium seating options” that offer extra legroom. In its announcement, the carrier said it expects about one-third of all seats across the Boeing fleet to have additional legroom eventually. No precise timeline was provided for these changes.
“Moving to assigned seating and offering premium legroom options will be a transformational change that cuts across almost all aspects of the company,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a statement.
While the airline said research indicated that 80 percent of its current customers preferred an assigned seat, it’s not the case for some Southwest loyalists like Benét J. Wilson, an aviation journalist and self-proclaimed Southwest “superfan.”
“It’s quirky and not everybody was into it, but I loved open seating, and I’m sad that it’s going away,” Wilson said. “Southwest needs to make more money, sure, but this change makes the airline similar to the legacy carriers, and it removes a sense of uniqueness.”
The company will follow in the footsteps of every other major U.S. airline with dedicated seat assignments and separate extra legroom positions, which will likely be offered for an additional fee. According to the airline, that will help draw in new customers.
“When a customer elects to stop flying with Southwest and chooses a competitor, open seating is cited as the number one reason for the change,” Southwest said in its news release. Indeed, it’s the precise reason I—despite having flown on all other major U.S. carriers and on numerous international carriers as an aviation reporter—haven’t flown the airline to date when traveling for pleasure. The stress of finding a seat was simply too much for me.
However, Michelle Baran, deputy news editor for Afar and mom to two kids, believes in Southwest’s existing seating process.
“I actually came to appreciate the model when I became a mom traveling with children,” Baran said. “I could place them on the seat next to me and had a chance at some added space if the flight wasn’t full. Not being crammed in is a game changer for parents traveling with small kids and also a relief for others who maybe don’t want to sit next to a screaming toddler for the entire flight.”
Naturally, Southwest’s boarding process does, at times, provoke anxiety and raise the potential for awkward interactions. Ashley Yu, a Los Angeles–based program manager who flies Southwest regularly, likened open seating to students sitting in a classroom trying to avoid the teacher’s gaze. “When passengers walk down the aisle of the plane, everyone in their seat looks away hoping no one asks them to sit there,” Yu noted. “It’s usually not a big deal, but there is this sense of ‘Oh no, please don’t look at me’ that you don’t get on other airlines.”
In addition to these upcoming changes, Southwest will commence red-eye flying in February, with the first overnight flights launching for the following routes: Las Vegas to Baltimore and Orlando; Los Angeles to Baltimore and Nashville; and Phoenix to Baltimore.
Earlier this year, Southwest also made a major digital pivot by piloting a program that allows the airline’s fares to display on Google Flights search results, just as all the other major U.S. carriers do. The airline is clearly transforming. But will all of this alienate existing loyalists?
Time will tell, but the airline has finally won over at least one new customer: me.
