Southwest passengers will start noticing big changes long before assigned seating starts

1 month ago 21

If you're a regular Southwest Airlines customer, you may start noticing some big changes at the airline sooner than you might expect.

Late last month, executives at the Dallas-based carrier laid out a massive commercial overhaul, including more details on the airline's plan to ditch its half-century-old open seating policy in favor of its first-ever assigned and extra-legroom seats.

As TPG reported last week, those assigned seats are set to go on sale in late 2025 for flights departing in the first half of 2026.

You won't have to wait until 2026 to see the extra-legroom seats appearing on some planes, though. And long before the airline's most seismic changes go live, Southwest is planning a shift in how it prices some of its current add-on boarding products.

Extra legroom seats to appear next year

Southwest won't start selling its assigned seats — or extra-legroom seat assignments — until later next year. However, planes sporting the more spacious rows should start rolling out quietly, appearing on some of Southwest's flights during the course of next year.

Between now and late 2025, the airline has a huge undertaking: It has to retrofit its entire fleet of around 800 jets with the new seating configurations. It'll start with its larger Boeing 737-800 and 737 MAX 8 jets and then move on to its 737-700s.

Southwest hopes to win Federal Aviation Administration approval for the new cabin configurations by early next year, executives said; the airline is already working to secure the necessary permissions.

"We expect the engineering work to be complete and certification in hand so that we can begin our retrofit on our larger aircraft in the first quarter of 2025," Ryan Green, executive vice president of commercial transformation, told investors last week.

Once it gets started, Southwest hopes to retrofit between 50 and 100 jets per month, slowing the pace during the summer months so fewer planes are out of service during a peak travel period.

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Once crews finish reconfiguring a plane, it won't just sit parked until assigned seating begins. Instead, it'll rejoin the fleet and return to Southwest's flight schedule. After all, planes don't help the airline generate money while they're out of service.

That means some lucky passengers should get a sneak peek at Southwest's extra-legroom seats before the airline's open-seating era technically winds down.

Big change: Here are the 20 Southwest Airlines routes that will get red-eye flights

Passengers will likely be surprised

Until Southwest's assigned seating setup fully launches in early 2026, there likely won't be an easy way to know whether your Southwest plane has already been updated with the extra-legroom seats.

However, it's possible you'll get an inkling at the gate: Southwest tells TPG gate agents might, in some cases, alert customers about the more spacious offerings just prior to departure.

The seats, which Southwest says will represent about a third of the cabin (closer to 40% on some jets), are likely to be in hot demand on those flights during the final months of open seating.

In fact, the airline expects the seats to drive renewed interest in its existing EarlyBird and Upgraded Boarding products; those products help passengers secure an earlier spot in the boarding line and, by extension, an earlier seat pick in its current first come, first served seating model.

"Certainly, as you get to kind of a critical mass of the fleet, and you have a flight that's going to Hawaii that has been retrofit, and you have extended legroom on that plane ... the demand for Upgraded Boarding at the gate should go up," Green said, as an example.

Dynamic pricing planned for current boarding products

To that end, Southwest executives teased another change that's just around the corner for its present add-on service. "We're going to be dynamically pricing these ancillaries as well. That's not something we do today with EarlyBird or Upgraded Boarding," Green said, noting those changes will go live sometime in late 2024 or early 2025.

What is dynamic pricing?

Dynamic pricing essentially means the pricing structure is fluid and can fluctuate up or down based on a variety of algorithm-dictated factors. Supply and demand are chief among those factors. It's an increasingly common pricing model throughout the industry.

Notably, a growing number of airlines now dynamically price award flights instead of using the award charts that once made points and miles redemptions more predictable.

For instance, it's conceivable that the airline might find customers willing to pay a premium for Upgraded Boarding on a longer flight to, say, Hawaii in hopes of securing one of the more spacious seats.

Still, it's not yet clear how such a dynamic pricing model could ultimately affect the cost of Southwest's current add-on services before the carrier switches over to assigned seating. Executives seemed confident the products should make more money as extra-legroom-equipped jets begin to enter service next year.

"It's going take us some time to get the model trained on that, but I think there's probably some upside in current boarding product ancillary revenue when we get that done," Green said.

It's worth noting that Southwest already uses a fairly fluid pricing model for EarlyBird and Upgraded Boarding. Earlier this year, it hiked the top-level fees on both amid a wave of airlines raising ancillary fees.

EarlyBird — which automatically reserves passengers' place in line 36 hours before departure — costs $15 to $99 one-way, per traveler.

Upgraded Boarding — which guarantees passengers an A1-15 boarding position — costs between $30 and $149 per segment, per traveler.

Again, all of this may be temporary: EarlyBird and Upgraded Boarding are products unique to Southwest's open seating concept, and they could be tweaked (or disappear altogether) as Southwest's switch to assigned seating takes hold.

For now, Southwest customers will have lots of changes to digest in the next year.

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Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

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