I continue to be confused by Southwest Airlines. This is a company that had a credible start to a plan to modernize the business, then was forced to sell its soul to make more money more quickly, and now… I am at a loss. The airline is preparing for its first modified airplane with extra legroom seating options, but it can’t seem to get its story straight. The configuration appears to be changing on a regular basis. There is clearly an internal struggle going on here, and it’s playing out in public.
If you recall, when Southwest announced it would roll out an extra legroom section throughout the fleet, it had a dog-and-pony show at investor day back in September which I attended. We got on an airplane that was mocked up with the new seats, and here is what that looked like:
The plan was to have 68 “Extra Legroom” seats, 53 “Preferred” seats (Standard seats that are closer to the front and cost extra), and then 54 “Standard” seats in the back of the bus. This kept the total on the B737-800 and MAX 8 the same as it is today at 175 seats.
The beauty of this change was that it not only kept the seat count the same, but it provided options for customers to spend more and get more, if they wanted. I figure that the Extra Legroom seats up front would command the most money followed by the ones behind the wing and then finally the Preferred seats behind that since they have no tangible difference except for position on the airplane. In all, two-thirds of the seats would have been able to generate some revenue that can’t be generated today.
But now, this plan has been changed. Southwest released a page about assigned seating on its website, and that included an updated seat map which looks like this:
What’s different? The number of seats on the airplane remains at 175, but things have just moved around. Most importantly, there are a lot fewer Extra Legroom seats. All those behind the exit are gone and have become Standard seats. It would have dropped even further had the airline not made everything around the wing exit an Extra Legroom seat, that added eight to the total.
This configuration has 46 instead of 68 Extra Legroom seats, reducing earning capability. There would also be 84 Standard seats. This means that instead of having 121 seats that Southwest can get people to pay extra for, it would now have only 91. And remember, Southwest gained ZERO new seats by making this change, so it’s a headscratcher.
This would have been remarkably stupid if it was actually put on an airplane like this. The seating behind the exit would have remained unchanged from where it is today. That means Standard seats would continue to have 32″ of pitch which means if you want to pay more to get a Preferred seat, you would actually pay for LESS legroom at 31″ of pitch.
But fear not, because this plan has already changed again, even though the website hasn’t been updated to suggest that’s the case. On Southwest’s Q1 earnings call, Tom Fitzgerald with TD Cowen asked about the reduction in Extra Legroom seats. COO Andrew Watterson said this:
… behind the exit row, Extra Legroom was obviously going to be not as attractive as in front of the exit row, so we decided to concentrate more extra legroom in front of the exit row to make them more attractive and reinforce the pricepoint for them. And the ones that were formerly Extra Legroom behind the exit row, we’ll turn those into a form of Preferred seats. They will have a little bit extra legroom…
Wait, what? So now there will be two different types of Preferred seats, apparently. The ones in front of the exit will have 31″ of pitch, but the ones behind will have a “little bit” more. We can try and do some math here to figure out what that means.
Those three rows around the wing exits are now going to be Extra Legroom. That would suggest that the second and third rows are actually going to move back a few inches, because they were not going to have more than 31″ of pitch before. (Side note: That’s why there is no window seat in that middle row. It means Southwest didn’t need extra legroom to have clear access to the exit. But if those will now have extra legroom, then why would you keep the missing window seat configuration? Maybe we’ll see yet another change….)
Anyway, then you have the five rows behind the exit that were going to be Extra Legroom at 34″ pitch but will now be Preferred at, I dunno, maybe 32″ pitch? (What counts as “a little bit” of extra legroom?) If it’s 32″, that means you save 10 inches over the last configuration. So then maybe the two back exit rows go up to 36″ of pitch? That would put the Standard seats at 31″ and the math works.
Of course, this now means that you technically have four different types of seating even though you only have three names for them. If you want Preferred, you’ll have to decide between sitting up front or getting a little bit of extra legroom. This is not a clear message.
On the call, Southwest said this “gives us better revenue monetization opportunites in the end,” but I don’t see how that’s even possible. All this does is gain 8 Extra Legroom seats at the exit instead of having 30 more immediately behind the exit. Considering you’re going to have a lot of A-Listers getting Extra Legroom for free with status, this does not seem like a revenue-positive tradeoff. People will pay more for true Extra Legroom than for a Preferred seat.
For his part, CEO Bob Jordan backpedaled on the original investor day plan saying, “What we showed you was a very strong hypothesis [of what the aircraft would look like].” I don’t believe that for one minute. What they showed us was the real plan, but someone changed it.
My money is on the new board members causing trouble over there. Somebody decided this new configuration was better, but I don’t see how that could be based on actual analysis. This feels like an internal struggle that’s playing out in front of our eyes. I know the first airplane is coming out in a matter of days. Let’s see if it changes again before that happens.
Bonus Stupidity: The Boarding Process
Since I’m already fired up, I might as well pile on with a look at the shift in the boarding process. Back at investor day, Southwest talked about how it would keep its boarding process with the different boarding poles because it was a better experience. I don’t disagree. But now, it has decided to throw that out entirely and go to a very standard boarding process. But why?
The current boarding process is usefully different. It provides a less-stressful environment than the other airlines, and it should speed up the process itself by getting everyone in a neat and orderly line. It also just sets a tone that this is not the same old airline as all the rest — even if it is increasingly becoming that same old airline in reality.
That being said, perhaps the biggest argument in favor of keeping the boarding process is… it already exists. There is certainly the argument to be made that the poles take up real estate that could be filled with seating instead. That would be very customer-friendly, but it doesn’t generate additional revenue. I also don’t imagine that changing the boarding process would shift anyone’s purchase behavior, so Southwest can’t really care about this in its current state.
The reality is that keeping the poles is the easiest and most cost-effective way to deal with boarding, besides having a potential positive benefit. It is no doubt going to be costly to remove all of these setups from every airport and then install new seating. There is no sane argument for that to happen.
These two decisions make me really question who is running the show over there. If these changes were going to result in a financial benefit, at least they would be consistent with everything else we’ve seen happen lately. But this is the opposite, and it is very concerning.
49 comments on “On the Eve of the First Aircraft Retrofit, Southwest Keeps Changing Its Plans”
If this is what you’re seeing from Southwest as an outsider, I can only imagine how confusing & chaotic things are at Southwest for the middle management and below (down to the rank and file hourly employees who will actually have to reconfigure the planes, if that isn’t outsourced).
At this point everyone at Southwest probably just wants A decision (ANY decision) from upper management that management will stick to for at least 9-12 months, regardless if it’s the “best” decision. Not to mention that those types of situations usually involve a lot of extra (and wasted) work and stress from the lower levels as plans constantly change and as internal politics see certain concepts move and in out of favor.
I’ve been in those situations at other companies where management can’t make up its dang mind and it’s incredibly frustrating and demoralizing to the lower levels of the organization when leadership isn’t leading on issues like that.
People want to be led by leaders who can communicate where they going, why they are going there, and how they are going to get there efficiently, not by leaders who take them in a path reminiscent of that in a Family Circus cartoon.
It’s difficult to get your team members ready to support the new changes when they don’t even know what changes are going to happen until the very last minute. Clearly Elliot and friends lopped off the budget line for “change management.” There was no line for “decisiveness” but that appears to be AWOL as well. The fact this is all playing out in public means it’s likely 10x worse internally. Total clown show.
For the first time ever, I booked away from WN to fly to Chicago, even though MDW is far more convenient for me. When AA seems like a well run operation by comparison, you know you’re in trouble.
On the boarding process, my best guess is WN sees more potential to monetize priority boarding as demand for overhead bins ticks up with the end of free bags—and perhaps it’s easier to sell customers an opaque “priority” group as opposed to the current numbering system where it’s obvious you might be the 30th or 40th person to board the plane?
Struggles played out in public like this don’t bode well for the future.
Yes exactly. We are watching in real time what happens when private equity sticks their grubby little hands into the operations of an airline. We also know what the end result will be as we’ve seen the results from such businesses as Toys R Us, Alexander’s & now Sears.
Cranky, are you doing a podcast on this?
Sears and Toys R Us were damaged businesses before private equity showed up. Walmart, Costco and Amazon changed the retail landscape and these businesses never adapted.
That maybe true about both Toys R Us & Sears, but it doesn’t refute the fact that it was private equity that drove in the final nails into their respective coffins.
In spite of their massive sizes Wal-Mart, Target, CVS & Walgreens for different reasons are down that same path & Southwest better be careful as they too maybe headed down that same runway if they don’t “lift their nose & straighten their wings” soon.
SEAN – No, I think the guys are tired of hammering on Southwest for now, so we’ll focus on other topics.
Well CF, it appears that Southwest is in its own CF.
Speak for yourself, sir!
You’d think that Southwest could work through seat maps like you have done here, and it shouldn’t be that hard to come up with something that makes sense.
However, they don’t even need to do that. Plenty of other carriers have all done this before; this isn’t a novel problem to solve. Just look at a few historical seat maps from Delta, American, United, JetBlue, even EasyJet and Ryanair, and see what works for them. They may as well just straight up copy the seat map from other carriers like all the rest of their new business model.
I agree, but none of those carriers have a parasite currently attached that is slowly sucking the life out of them.
They don’t think all this chaos is costing them anything with customers, but they’re wrong. I’m buying my ticket for my November Dallas trip in the next three weeks (with two free checked bags) and then I’m likely to never fly them again. I’m disgusted at the money grab and the crappy way they’re treating their employees. If they want to turn into People’s Express, OK, you can disappear just like they did. I know I only fly two people three or four times a year so in theory, I’m not their primary customer, but I’m sure American or United will be very happy to have us.
All of the serious Southwest loyalists that I know are angry and disgusted, and they are all also weighing where to take their business. Greed is not a good move, especially these days.
I think we see why Alaska has decided to go for it in San Diego. Southwest will fight, but if customers there aren’t happy with the airline’s new direction, Alaska is ready to take their business.
AS keeps the credit card offering simple with BofA – Personal, Business and the soon to be issued Premier card (pricey for $395) – but still
simpler as compared to WN and Chase…they offer too many cards with no superior benefits as compared to the “Big 3”.
I just learned that there’s a Chase-issued WN personal employee credit card. No annual fee and earns Raid Rewards Points.
WN has already screwed-up on the first bag fly free offer with some of their credit cards. WN does NOT offer a free checked bag when an authorized user purchases a ticket and is NOT flying with the main cardholder. How dumb…and what a screw-up!
AS allows an authorized user and up to six additional passengers on the same reservation to utilize the first checked bag free offer.
I have to use a corporate card for biz travel – however, I do have the AS BofA personal card – and my kids added as authorized users have been using the free checked bag offer for their own travel when AS started offering it in 2023.
The annual fee paid for the card is less than what they would have paid in bag fees in less than two round trips.
The Eskimo sees blood in the west coast waters…and is waiting to attack.
SO_CAL_RETAIL_SLUT
I have 3 angles to look at here.
First – FAA didn’t approve of the original design, especially around emergency exits.
Second – Less expensive to move lights & vents to match new rows during update with new layout, plus standardize the 700s/-7s with the 800s/-8s after modification.
Third – They know they have an audience that just buys prices or in family groups and they need the additional steerage seats in the back.
SYVJEFF – It can’t be the first one, because this is what exists on the airplane today. Nothing changes around the exits in the original design. It’s the new design that requires changes around the exits.
And the third one, that might have been the case in the second iteration, but now they’re back to the same number of Standard seats based on what they said on the earnings call.
Southwest’s exit rows today have extra legroom. They haven’t sold them that way in the past, but they definitely have more room.
What I don’t understand is how airlines can just keep cramming more and more seats into the same planes. Aren’t all planes only legally certified up to a certain limit, based not just on space, but the ability to evacuate on a certain amount of time? Or has that changed? Or is the FAA back to its old Good Ole Boy ways of just rubber stamping whatever the airlines ask for? How can they get away with putting (for example) around 200 seats in an A320, a plane that was originally designed for only around 175 in an all economy layout?
Matt – At no time in this entire process has the seat count changed on Southwest’s 737-800/-8 aircraft. But if you’re just talking about this in general for other airplanes, the aircraft is certified up to a certain level and then if it’s exceeded, they have to prove that they can still exit the airplane in the allotted time. It should probably be revisited, but good luck getting the FAA to do that now.
The FAA only requires that airlines can evacuate everyone in 90 seconds (or something like that), along with some safety assessments on the seat itself.
Over the years, seat manufacturers have gotten clever. They’ve introduced slimline seats that aren’t as well padded and has space more effectively, so airlines can cram more seats in while still providing similar (or slightly worse but still enough to meet evacuation requirements) room. Aircraft manufacturers have also gotten clever: Airbus has A321 configurations which move the exit door configuration to let LCCs squeeze in more seats, lavatories have gotten smaller, etc.
This has all the makings of a complete and utter disaster (can’t say what I want to). Who’s on first, what’s on second. This should be real fun (rolling eyes). Friends at WN at not happy campers either.
In other news: AA’s Gate Lice Detector appears to be working.
Captain,
The shortest and concise message by you is the best in my mind…..
I rarely fly SW, the exceptions being when it’s the only N/S option on a tough travel day/week. (BNA-LAS, e.g.) I think Elliott’s actions create the possibility of finally making it an adult airline, which its festival-seating tradition never allowed for. The first new seating chart would clearly have been a disaster, as pax used to scrambling wandered about the cabin looking for their (newly assigned) seats. The second option is far less messy. This is an airline in transition, and the battle between the Traditionalists and the Moderns is playing out in public, which as noted, is not a good look. Hoping to see white smoke in the chimney soon.
What I had previously liked about WN is that they managed to find ways to generate additional revenue by adding additional value. This just feels like a money grab by a once great airline. All by the same activists that killed Cabela’s. When the dust settles on all of this and Eliott has made their money, I hope someone does a complete analysis on this. It would be a great topic for analysis on the dynamic of stakeholder activism vs customer first. My question is this going to end up more like an 80’s Continental with Frank Lorenzo or a 90’s TWA with Carl Icahn or something in between?
All Southwest is doing is copying what the legacies do domestically in Y. It is aligning the company with the market. If Southwest was making +10% profit margins, the legacies would be looking to adopt Southwest’s current practices. The old Southwest model didn’t generate the profit margins that it’s peers can and needed to change. Based on how the market reacts, Southwest will adapt its new model. All airlines have mastered how to maximize load factors and capacity. Unfortunately, none can turn a profit just flying and need ancillary/credit card revenue.
The newest iteration sure looks a lot like JetBlue’s 320 configuration (except the extra 4 seats in the exit row at row 15)…..
Southwest / JetBlue
Extra Leg Room / EvenMore
Preferred / Preferred
Standard / Core
It’s been a barn burner of he said she said on what we’re doing. Latest update as of yesterday I heard was Rows 1-5 34 inch, rows 6/7-13 30 inches, Exit row 14-16 36 inches. Rows 17-29 will be locked upright in pre reclined 29 inches and row 30 28 inches.
Now to curb the expected increase in Fake Pre Boarding passengers Trying to score the best seats for free on the same day the airline starts charging for
Checked baggage.
If your Flight is being operated by and new seating arrangements Aircraft the following changes will happen.
IPre boarding passengers will be unable to sit it the EML seats unless you paid for BS A1-A15 or are in Group A16-60.
The flight attendants have special list on their IPADS which will show them if any Preboarding passengers have paid for BS or purchased Early Bird upgrade.
WN originally wasn’t going to make any changes to the board system during the transition But now they see the ability to sell Day of departure Upgrades on a flight by flight basis in the short term.
Now if this all gonna happen? It’s probably already changed since yesterday.
Not that I’m not saying that’s not going to happen, but those numbers don’t add up. If rows 7-13 went to 30”, rows 17-29 went to 29” and row 30 went to 28” that would be 57” extra room they have to work with and that isn’t reflected anywhere. That would mean the average extra leg room seats would be 39” pitch (and I’m not sure they need to add any extra pitch to current row 1 or 14 to get to the stated extra leg room pitch)
Sounds like it’s 34 upfront 31 for preferred 36 for exit rows and 29 for Standard seating.
29 inch pitch AND slimline (aka no padding whatsoever) seats? Yikes! Many of us who had them at even with a just a click below the major airlines are now going to consider WN a Spirit or Frontier with greater frequency. I haven’t seen a well respected company and brand completely self immolate this dramatically since Twitter.
Seriously, 29″? That’s insane, especially at their fares. That’s worse than an AA EMB-140.
If I’m gonna squeeze into 29″ I expect lower fares than I’m seeing WN offer on my planned summer travel right now.
This is why an employee shouldn’t spread incorrect information Jason. (This same person posts incorrect information on other sites as well, you can tell it’s the same person because he always uses EML as an acronym when Southwest’s branding of this is Extra Legroom) Ignore the 29” remark (and everything else he said) and maybe wait until correct information is actually released.
Agreed, that proposed layout doesn’t make any sense unless the seat count is changing. And I believe for the seat count to change, there needs to be a pilot negotiation. I would not expect that to be possible in such a short time period.
No they’re not going to the Frontier or Spirit seats. It’s the same Seats they currently have.
The new seats are actually more comfortable than their current offerings.
My understanding there just taking away the reclining options in the back half to make the seats seem less crowded.
Their new plan makes some sense. Previous one had way too many extra legroom seats as if anyone without seat assignment will very like sit on one of them. Once words got out, people will be discouraged from purchasing assigned seats. If extra legroom demand shoots up, then they’ll rearrange seats to create a few more rows behind exit row as in the initial plan.
Well it’s just a matter of pricing, a supply and demand sort of thing.
If they charge $5 for the extra room seats, they should sell pretty well even if it’s half the airplane. Of course that’s not going to happen, but other carriers manage pricing for those seats quite well by now so there’s no reason southwest couldn’t too if they were competent.
Regarding the boarding process:
I would argue with the claim that the process results in a “neat and orderly line”. The poles are too close together; they don’t seem to account for passengers with luggage (roller bags or backpacks), so the 5 people between each pole end up bunched around and standing next to each other.
At Long Beach, I noticed the poles aren’t in the seating area so much as the walkway, so it becomes difficult to get to a gate that’s past a flight that’s about to board, since those passengers are all standing around in the walkway between the shops and the gate seating area.
There may be behind the scenes reasons to move to a boarding process that doesn’t require the poles. One I can think of is operational flexibility, especially at airports with common-use gates. Right now Southwest needs to use gates where they’ve installed the poles. The poles don’t prevent other airlines from using the gates (they just ignore them, though they do take up space that other airlines might want to use for other things, like seats), but if Southwest has to use a gate that doesn’t have their poles, they need to have a different boarding method (maybe board by calling group letters like other airlines and disregarding the numbers?).
After studying the Fare Bundles, it’s kinda clear why the current boarding system has to go. Each fare bundle gets successively higher boarding priority as you work your way up the chart:
Basic: Last
Choice: General
Choice Preferred: Early General
Choice Extra: Early
Where this comes into play is when people make last minute changes. Everyone but Basic is eligible for same day change/standby. Under the current boarding system, those Choice Extra passengers making a last minute change get a boarding position after Basic. Yes, they currently let those people actually board between the A and B groups, but it would be easier to eliminate the numbers and just assign people into arbitrarily sized groups based on which fare class they booked. As is, the “A/B/C” designation is overly simplified, as there are several other groups that are called both before the A group as well as between the A and B groups. Not to mention each lettered group is really two groups, numbered 1-30 and 31-60.
In conclusion, the Southwest boarding system today is already more complicated than advertised, and with what they’re adding with the different fare bundles just makes it worse that, since they’re changing everything else about the airline, they might as well change this too.
If Southwest isn’t quite sure on the seat plan, it’s probably a good idea to just pause a bit, and get everyone to agree on one plan. Maybe best if this kiss-and-make-up thing happens in private but it’s not the end of the world if it spills over a bit into the public domain. What is more concerning is that seat maps and boarding groups is not rocket science. Automated yield management to extract every last cent can be considered to be rocket science and many people will not understand the finer nuances (there’s a reason why people with PhDs sometimes end up doing this)…. but seat maps and boarding groups are definitely on the simpler end of the scale. So why does it seem so hard to come up with a plan that everyone can agree on ?
It was a sad day when Southwest said they would eliminate free checked bags. Could at least kept one. Forget about seat modifications. They have lost the previous passengers who flew them because they were special and checked bags fo free.. Going on a cruise several times a year it was nice to check bags for free. Think about it. 2 travellers, two bags each x 2 (to/from) = $280.00 saved. Get everything into one bag = $140.00 saved. So shop around for the best fares, everything is equal. Yes you could get the Southwest credit card but who wants to pay an annual fee and some don’t want one or don’t qualify.
It sounds like Southwest needs to make up its corporate mind, and soon.
Signed,
Captain Obvious.
Some speculation on my part:
1. WN’s systems take longer to modify than their seating plans, especially to monetize seat reservation fees (aisle vs middle vs window, legroom, etc)
2. WN’s “plans” were shared prior to the additions to their BOD and Sr. Mngt team.
3. WN’s “teams” are running fact-based scenarios (what changes, what sequence) make the most sense financially
4. WN will have to take planes out of service to make these changes and are perhaps (..fingers-crossed..) waiting for Max-7 to be certified to have additional capacity in place at time of change.
While I have first hand experience seeing Elliott and PE attack F500 companies, the reality is they go after the weak and vulnerable.
No matter how much you LUV WN, their failure to update/enhance/tune/tweak both their Model and their Systems (Rev. Mngt, Operational) has put them at a material financial disadvantage.
Lastly, it will be interesting to see how long Elliott and Friends stick around before selling their shares and exiting.
One advantage that SWA originally might have been trying to preserve was its quick turn times. When people didn’t need to hunt for their specific seat it generally made things faster (all the pre boards and family groups notwithstanding). Alaska regularly starts boarding plane 45 minutes before pushback. Part of that is a good chunk of the plane at the front loads first when it’d make more sense to load from the back first. I can’t imagine Southwest wanting to board 45 minutes. Putting a lot of the “premium” seats in the mid-back could have helped with this. I guess the only downsize they realized is that customers have been trained by other airlines to expect all the premium seats up front. (Except for exit rows) So if they were doing any sort ui/ux testing they were noticing people were actually picking the second best seats up front over the others.
To your point, other than exit row seating, putting premium seats in the back half of the plane goes against everything that pax have been trained on and marketed to since practically the dawn of the jet age. Even when the seats & legroom are the same as for seats on the opposite end of the plane, other airlines explicitly use the “get off the plane first/early” as a selling point to get pax to pax extra for seats in the front of the plane, and there IS both a perceived and actual benefit for pax in that (even on an airline like Southwest, where not as many pax have connections to worry about).
To me, I see a few major selling points for buying specific seats:
1) Get more space (primarily legroom, sometimes also hip/elbow/shoulder room)
2) Get the seat you want (i.e., avoid a middle seat), even if it’s just a regular old seat
3) Board early (so that you don’t have to worry about overhead bin space for your rollerboard, which usually runs out for those in the last boarding groups in 737 & 320 series aircraft, forcing some basic economy pax who board late to gate check bags to their final destination’s baggage claim)
4) Get off the plane more quickly (get a seat closer to the front of the plane)
5) Get seats that come with better service / “freebies” (e.g., pre-departure drinks/snacks for first class, better meal options, etc) instead of buying those a la carte or not being able to buy those at all
Of course, airlines can (and usually do) bundle some or all of these, based on the boarding process rules, the fare classes, etc. I’ve ranked those in terms of descending value based on what I think matters for most pax overall, but that’s certainly debatable and I may be very wrong.
Well reasoned Brett. The confusion shows loudly. It appears to me like they’re forcing this change earlier than they want, reverse engineering the aircraft retrofits to when they have to start making changes (now) to finish by year end. I get a New Coke vibe of “we have to change and it’s going to be great!” I wish them well. Still lots of great people at WN.
This is an over reaction IMO. When Southwest announced the shift to assigned seating they had already been working on the LOPA. They were aggressive with their initial plan having 38% of the cabin be extra legroom. This was presented at Investor Day and their LOPA had already been submitted. They brought in one aircraft, retrofitted it, pulled it out of service to put the plane on display for the media/investors. A couple of weeks later they completed their agreement with Elliott and in November performed their board refresh along with hiring a new CFO. On the board/CFO, you have 5 former airline CEOs. Their experience at OA said other carriers fall more in line with the 26-31% range for premium seats. They wanted to avoid having too many ELR seats go unsold and train passengers not to buy but wait and try to move into them after takeoff. They found the initial layout confusing with ELR seats, preferred, exit row then more ELR.
Their 1st priority was to review the LOPA, and they immediately changed it in November. They had 3 options with minor variances(primarily related to exit row layout), but submitted a new LOPA long before their announcement last week. The working teams involved took action right away to account for the slight changes. There will be no seats less than 31 inches of pitch.
When it comes to boarding, they again had one strategy that then changed with the involvement of the board. Things were very messy under Ryan Green (which is why is gone). They worked closely with Amadeus to run modeling to ensure boarding wouldn’t be an issue. They were going to board loyalty first but then back to front alternating rows. The modeling showed they could board incorrectly up to 35%+ and still board faster than today.
What made it all the way to testing was very convoluted – boarding group, boarding number, boarding color, seat letter, seat number all to keep boarding groups of A/B/C and the stanchions. The board got involved and changed this to a more standard model. They have roughly 8-9 groups present day (Pre-board, A 1-15, A 16-30, A 31-60, etc.). They will have 8 groups, which will be segmented by tier/fare/card member etc. with the goal of having a net neutral impact on boarding times.
Lastly, they can’t add seats unless they want to open up the Pilot CBA. There was a desire to get to 177 seats (exit rows), but it was deemed not worth the financial cost of renogiating anything Pilot related.
I view this all as an over reaction because they had plans, then changed them long ago and everyone involved on the working teams internally have known for months so it isn’t just a flip of a switch lets suddenly change. And second, if extra legroom seats were consistently sold out (not just filled at the 48 hour mark through loyalty/credit card customers), they could just retrofit again and add more. Aircraft go out of service overnight. And there will naturally be another touchpoint as they get in the new Recaro seats next year regardless.