comments:
Southwest made the right move here. I get why people are nostalgic about open seating because it was part of the brand forever, but nostalgia doesn’t pay for aircraft, fuel, labor, maintenance, or airport costs. The Simple Flying piece lays out the business case pretty clearly: Southwest had a customer preference problem and a revenue problem. If 80% of current passengers and 86% of prospective passengers preferred assigned seating, then open seating wasn’t some beloved universal feature anymore. It had become friction, especially for families, business travelers, and anyone who didn’t want to play the boarding-position lottery. This also lines up with the broader airline economics. In The Economics of Airlines by Volodymyr Bilotkach, one of the big points is that airlines don’t just compete on base fare. They compete on schedule, convenience, product features, seat choice, baggage rules, loyalty programs, and all the little pieces of the travel experience. Open seating made Southwest simpler operationally, but it also left them unable to monetize seat preference the way nearly every other carrier does. That doesn’t mean every customer will like it. Some won’t. But from Southwest’s point of view, the old model was boxing them in. Assigned seating gives them more pricing flexibility, lets them sell premium seats, reduces anxiety for a lot of travelers, and makes them look less weird to people comparing them against American, United, Delta, JetBlue, etc. People keep acting like this is just “greed,” but airlines are brutally capital-intensive businesses with thin margins and very high fixed costs. If the aircraft is going to fly anyway, the airline has to maximize revenue per flight. Charging more for better seats is not some exotic scam. It’s basic airline revenue management. The old Southwest model worked brilliantly for decades. But the market changed, passengers changed, and competitors copied enough of Southwest’s low-cost playbook while adding their own fee structures. At that point, Southwest either adapts or slowly becomes a sentimental brand with a weaker business model. I’d rather see them adapt.