Dive Brief:
- Southwest Airlines will assign seats for fliers starting in 2025, the company announced Thursday, changing its long-held open seating that set the company apart from competitors. Internal research found that 80% of its customers, and 86% of potential customers, prefer an assigned seat to the company’s open seating model.
- The airline plans to introduce premium seating options with additional legroom and it is working on a new cabin design with more comfortable seats.
- “Our team has been hard at work evaluating fundamental changes to our seating cabin and boarding procedures,” President and CEO Bob Jordan said on a Q2 2024 earnings call Thursday. “It's clear that the open seating model that served us well for so many years is no longer optimal for today's customer.”
Dive Insight:
Southwest expects assigned seats to improve customer retention and drive revenue while meeting modern customer expectations.
Former customers cite the open seating policy as the top reason for leaving Southwest in favor of rival airlines, according to internal research. The company expects the assigned seating model to attract more demand from current and lapsed customers.
Southwest designed its new boarding process through a combination of live boarding tests and more than 8 million digital simulations to ensure assigned seating won’t slow down operations or delay flights.
The simulations were based on data from flights and passenger manifests to help the company understand how different boarding policies would affect overall boarding times, according to Jordan.
“I want to stress that this decision was not made lightly,” Jordan said. He noted that the company followed a careful process that included conducting studies over multiple months.
About one-third of seats in Southwest’s refreshed cabins will be assigned for extended legroom seating. The airline plans to reveal further details regarding premium offerings during the airline’s investor day conference in September.
Southwest isn’t the only airline emphasizing premium seating as a differentiator. Delta Air Lines is emphasizing its high-end amenities as a way to improve revenue despite rising fuel prices.
