Southwest was a news machine last week. After posting a bad quarter with an even worse outlook, it announced redeyes and most importantly, the introduction of assigned seating along with an extra legroom section. This is all good — well, except for the current results and outlook — but we still don’t know much about how this is going to be implemented. Let’s talk about that.
What we know so far is that Southwest will introduce assigned seating, but we don’t know how seats will be assigned. It will also create an extra legroom section that will make up a third of the seats onboard, roughly. Further, we know that Southwest still likes its boarding process even with assigned seating. We also know this isn’t happening tomorrow. It takes time to put all the pieces together, and it’s such a big task that the former Chief Commercial Officer is now focused on the changes exclusively.
There are presumably many decisions that are still to be made, but I’m happy to guess on some things here. First, the boarding process. CEO Bob Jordan said this on the earnings call:
We’re also designing a boarding process that retains the organized calm our customers enjoy today, but also complements an assigned seating model.
It is true that there is nothing better than orderly boarding that avoids gate lice stepping all over each other to jockey for position. If a third of the plane will be extra legroom, I can see a world where the A group becomes extra legroom section followed by two groups of regular seating. The boading poles are already there in every airport, so they might as well use them. It also gives an opportunity to retain some sort of early boarding product. I don’t know why people would pay for it if seats are assigned, but some people are nutty. Might as well take their money.
When it comes to money, it remains to be seen exactly how Southwest will charge for this. Will it charge for regular seat assignments, letting everyone who doesn’t pay get them at check-in just like an ultra low-cost carrier? Will it have a basic economy-style bundle that doesn’t include a seat assignment while everything else does? Will it have the garbage “preferred” seating section which is no different than everywhere else but usually sits further forward? I tend to think most of those are unlikely.
Southwest is an airline that tries to stay true to its customer service orientation. I would be surprised if we saw Southwest taking things away from people. More likely is that regular seat assignments would be included, but if people want to sit in the extra legroom section, they’d obviously have to pay for that separately or buy a higher fare bundle. Presumably A-Listers would get it for free, helping to improve the value of the loyalty program.
And what about that legroom? How will it be configured? I geeked out a little too much on this. I know that they will be outfitting the whole fleet, but I ignored the 737-700s and -7 MAX aircraft since those are harder to figure out and will probably require losing a row anyway. Instead, let’s take a look at the current configuration of the 737-800 and -8 MAX.
There are 175 seats with a minimum of 32 inches of seat pitch (the distance from one point on a seat to the same point on the seat in the row ahead). That is pretty generous considering American has a full first class cabin and extra legroom section and still fits 172 seats on the same airplane.
The ones I’ve market in blue are the ones I believe have extra legroom. The exit rows I know are right, but I’m not completely sure about the bulkhead.
Because Southwest has a generous 32 inches of pitch, it can afford to give up an inch. That’s probably even more likely true since it is installing new seats on the airplane that will presumably provide better legroom than the seats that are on the airplane today.
I’m assuming that Southwest goes down to 31 inches and then comes up to 34 inches for extra legroom. Below you’ll see one possible scenario for how this could work.
If Southwest takes out one inch of pitch on eight rows in front of the exits, then it can make four rows with 34 inches. I got a little murky with the bulkhead since I’m still not completely sure what has extra legroom and what doesn’t there.
To get this many extra legroom seats, however, it does have to put some behind the wing. Back there, if they take 1 inch from 10 rows and then have 2 inches from 1 row in the way back, that’s enough to create six more rows with 34 inches.
We don’t even know if it will be 34 inches, but the point is, Southwest can keep the same number of seats onboard and create a lot of extra legroom seating that it can sell. At the same time, it can continue giving above average legroom to everyone else onboard. (Well, maybe except that last row which would be just average….)
This has the ability to generate a lot of revenue using the same number of seats, which is exactly the point.
It sounds like we’ll learn a lot more in September when the airline has its investor day, but despite Elliott’s best efforts to shame the airline, I would assume this management team will do things in a more customer-friendly way that will help bolster the company’s reputation instead of harm it.
