Well, that was quick. After just over two months of having assigned seating onboard, Southwest has decided to revert back to its old open seating model. This is obviously a big change, but the rationale behind it makes sense considering this is an airline that has lived off generating free publicity over the last year or more.
Early feedback was positive on Southwest’s move to assigned seating as part of a much broader shift in the airline’s business model. But then, people got quiet after the initial fanfare subsided. Southwest had become just like every other airline, so travelers just stopped talking about it. This was a problem for an airline that had become addicted to free media coverage. This reliance amplified in recent years with cost pressures rising. After the relentless, regular news releases filled with changes in the last year dried up, it needed to do something new to regain that benefit.
That parade of changes last year was thanks to Elliott Investment Management, which took an activist position in the airline. It had laid out what it wanted to see in order to improve financial performance, and CEO Bob Jordan dutifully ensured all of those were implemented. Once that was finished, Bob went back to Elliott to float some other ideas that his team had pitched. They said no to all of them. So, he went and sulked while trying to figure out a plan to appease his overlords.
Bob thought about raising the checked bag fee, but every airline does that, so would anyone even talk about it? He then considered painting the fleet in a new livery, but he was heard mumbling something about not wanting to make Papa Gary mad. So instead, he turned to the idea of returning to open seating.
In the release announcing the switch back, CEO Bob Jordan laid out the rationale by saying:
The media coverage we received after making the change was such a thrill, and it really energized our People. Now that it has died down, everyone seems kind of sad, so I wanted to do something to cheer them up. And you know, advertising is pretty expensive, so I came up with this idea to help ease the cost burden while also rallying our People to win.”
COO Andrew Watterson seemed somewhat less enthusiastic about the change since his team will have to reverse all the work that has been done recently to enable assigned seating. He noted, “Well, at least we didn’t throw away the old boarding poles yet. So we’ve got that going for us… which is nice.”
The hardest part was working to figure out how to deal with the assignment of extra legroom seating on the aircraft. CFO Tom Doxey reportedly put his foot down on spending money under Bob’s first plan to reconfigure the airplanes again, so extra legroom will remain. That’s when the decision was made to just bring back EarlyBird priority boarding and let people sit wherever they want when they board. This makes EarlyBird a whole lot more appealing which means they can make a lot more money selling it.
If this move is successful, Bob said he wasn’t against the idea of bringing back more past innovations that have fallen by the wayside. When I asked him what he had in mind, he said the first thing on his list was to bring back lounge seating at the front of each airplane, but that was closely followed by flight attendant hot pants.
When I asked how the transition back to open seating would occur, Bob shrugged, mumbled something about how this wasn’t his problem, and told me to talk to Andrew . Andrew said that unlike the original change, they weren’t going to do a hard transition at the end of schedule. Instead, he said travelers would just take their seat number and move the letter to the before the row number. That will be the boarding position. If you were in seat 18A, you’ll now board with number A18.
With this simple switch, it enables the airline to implement the change immediately, as of today. Or actually, it will be as of never, because… Happy April Fools’ Day to all.
