When I wrote about my recent trip on Southwest, the comment section had plenty of discussion around the problem of the Southwest B737-700. Of Southwest’s ~800-strong fleet of airplanes, there are still about 300 B737-700s. Those airplanes are not getting retrofitted with new seats, power, etc, and that seems like a problem for an airline looking to create consistency after a dramatic period of change. Though this will be a problem for a few years, it is an ever-shrinking one, and Southwest has reduced the aircraft’s impact in the network.
First, it’s important to note that these airplanes are going away quickly. In 2025, 48 of the -700s were retired. This year there are 60 airplanes leaving the fleet and I’ll assume the vast majority of those are -700s as well. So the numbers are quickly shrinking. This mesmerizing chart tells the story of fleet renewal at Southwest.
Southwest Departures by Fleet Type by Month
110-seaters in yellow, 140-seaters in blue, 175-seaters in red… Data via Cirium
The original B737-200s were gone in early 2005, and it wasn’t long before the -700 NGs took over as the most important aircraft for the airline from the -300 Classics. The larger -800 NGs showed up in 2012, but they remained small as the -700s continued to grow, including with second-hand purchases that went on for years.
It was July 2018 when Southwest’s -700 fleet hit its peak, scheduling 95,076 flights for the month, or more than 3,000 daily departures. This was clearly the backbone of the fleet, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
The MAX was supposed to begin the phase-out of the NG fleet, but it ran into, shall we say, a couple of problems. First, Boeing programmed the airplane to try to crash itself in certain circumstances, so it was grounded and wouldn’t come back into service until 2021. And second, the -7 variant which was meant to replace the -700 kept failing to be certified in the aftermath of that mess. It still hasn’t been certified to this day, so Southwest has taken delivery exclusively of -8s.
As the industry came out of the pandemic in 2021, Southwest’s -800/-8 flying looked like a hockey stick. It grew remarkably fast while the -700s were retired. Southwest had entered a phase of limited-to-no fleet growth, and so it just kept replacing -700s with newer, larger airplanes.
June 2023 was the first month that Southwest scheduled more departures on the -800/-8 than on the -700, but it was by a hair. And then the -700 took the top spot again, briefly. The last time the -700 had more departures scheduled was May 2024 when there were 62,710 departures on the -700 and 62,678 on the -800/-8. Fast forward to this upcoming May and the -700 has only 47,645 departures scheduled compared to 75,737 on the -800/-8. It is shifting quickly.
Of course, the problem here is that the -700s are still a bad experience compared to the -800s/-8s which will all have the new general standard interior installed. And though the number of -700 flights continues to decline, it’s still a significant number of passengers impacted by that bad experience.
What can Southwest do? It can start to put the -700s on shorter and shorter flights. That’s exactly what it has done, though I have no idea if that was the reasoning. This chart, I found fascinating.
Southwest Average Stage Length by Fleet Type Over Time
Data via Cirium
If we go back 20 years, Southwest’s -700s were the long-haul airplanes by necessity — the -200s/300s/500s couldn’t go all that far. But about 10 years ago, the -700s began to fly less than the average stage length for the airline as its newer -800s came into the fleet and did the longer-hauls.
You can see that stage length on the -800s has come down over time, and that’s because the -700s keep being replaced. But look at what has happened in the last six months, there has been a marked shift.
It was really starting around October that the -700s were deliberately put on shorter flights. Let’s take a look at the this coming May vs last May. The difference is striking.
Southwest Departures by Stage Length – May 2026 vs May 2025
Data via Cirium
So, yes, Southwest has a product problem. But also yes, it is doing what it can to fix it, short of spending millions to update a fleet that isn’t going to last more than a few years more.
That doesn’t solve the problem in the short term, but I imagine we’re going to keep seeing those airplanes retire at a rapid clip. We’re apparently just going to have to grin-and-bear it until the work is done. In the meantime, if you have multiple flight options, you might want to pick the one that isn’t on a -700 if you want the better experience.
