LUV And The End Of Seat Choice

 It is not often that I comment on current events (as the articles tend to date pretty quickly), but something happened yesterday which is pretty significant, at least to me in the past few years:  Southwest Airlines (Ticker Code LUV) has announced the end to its open seating policy.

The announcement came yesterday as part of its 2nd Quarter 2024 financial results.  Instead of continuing the practice of open seating (whereby customers choose their seats as they board), they will move to what is the traditional airline model, assigned seating and the differentiation of seating (e.g., "premium seats" with slightly extra legroom and undoubtedly higher prices).  The change comes after 50 years of this policy, and is likely a response to a combination of a tough market and an activist investor group.  That I saw, no timing of the change has been announced.

For domestic travel, Southwest has been our airline of choice for years, mostly because of their pricing.  Their seating policy was one of the "quirks" of flying the airline - but the results were cheaper tickets (not unnoticeable with up to five people traveling at one time).  To be fair, their reputation as the "cattle car" of airlines was not wholly undeserved:  self sorting at the gate, snacks consisting of their now-famous bag of snack mix and a drink, the inevitable last minute thoughts as everyone waited for the last boarders (the "C" group) to break down and realize that middle seats where the only option and they really would have to gate check their luggage.  But their flights were relatively cheap, especially if you booked early, and their Rewards program was rather good (reaching "A" status, where you are automatically checked in and your seating is almost always in the "A" group, and mostly within the first 30 seats really makes a difference).  And their "Two bags fly free" policy puts most of the rest of the industry to shame in a world where everyone else charges for every bag, at least on a domestic flight.

I am surprisingly grateful to an entity like Southwest.  Their pricing and pricing model has allowed us to make many trips in the past between New Home and Old Home that we could not otherwise have made.  They allowed me to travel back monthly in the last stage of my parents lives in a way I do not think I could have afforded on any other airline for that long of a period of time (just under four years).

I have no idea what the post-assigned seating world for them will look like; if past experience with any other change is an indication it will be more expensive, offer less service overall, and eventually become homogenous with every other airline out there.  Their quirky ways, or what is left of them, will be subsumed in standard practices and it will simply become one more option almost completely the same with every other airline that flies.

I still have a great many points that I have accumulated over the last four years that I will need to spend down, so likely I will be around long enough to see the changes before they run out.  On the one hand that is great for me (as it a very small fee out of pocket), on the other hand it will undoubtedly make me sad as it continues.  

Thanks, Southwest, for giving me a lot of happy memories of trying to hit the check-in time and being disappointed.  Thanks for the minor victories when I managed to get higher seated on those check-ins.  Thanks for making sure I could see my parents when they needed me most.

We will always have Snack Mix and Diet Cokes at 35,000 feet.