After 57 Years, Southwest Airlines Is Dropping Its Open Seating Policy

Southwest Airlines is making the biggest shift in its 57-year history. Effective immediately, the airline will start assigning seats and offering premium seat options, on all its flights.

It is a seismic shift in the philosophy of Southwest, and one it is making because “preferences have evolved” among its customers, who are taking longer flights and prefer to be able to pick their own seats on those routes.

“The research is clear and indicates that 80% of Southwest Customers, and 86% of potential customers, prefer an assigned seat,” Southwest said in its announcement. “When a customer elects to stop flying with Southwest and chooses a competitor, open seating is cited as the number one reason for the change.”

President Bob Jordan said this week that the move is a “transformational change” but one that is the “right choice” because of that research.

Open seating has been a huge part of Southwest’s DNA ever since it was launched. As the airline started expanding in the 1980s, Southwest’s marketing told passengers that “you choose who sits next to you.”

“Unlike assigned seating, you’re free to sit next to someone just like you,” an ad from 1984 said.

The idea was to keep things simple for their customers, with the pitch being to pay a low fare and get treated the same as everyone else with no priority boarding, no cabin classes, and no assigned seats. But now, all that is changing.

Other big changes

At the same time, Southwest is making two other big changes that it hopes will “broaden” its appeal to flyers.

The first also has to do with seating. Southwest will start offering a premium ticket option on its flights that has extra legroom, another change that comes from customer preferences. The timetable for this change is a little less clear—Southwest says the layout details “are still in design.”

The second is new redeye domestic flights within the U.S. that will launch on Valentine’s Day 2025. Initially, Southwest will offer overnights between five markets: Las Vegas to Baltimore and Orlando; Los Angeles to Baltimore and Nashville; and Phoenix to Baltimore. It expects to add more in the future, too. Again, another change Southwest is making because of passenger preferences.

Why now?

After two of the best years in travel history, airlines are seeing a drop in profit as consumer demand for air travel, and appetite to pay high prices for it, falls.

Southwest’s second-quarter profit was down 46% compared to the same time a year ago and American Airlines said on Thursday that its second-quarter profit was also down 46% (American also has other major issues).

Southwest’s changes and additions, along with American’s about-face on its sales strategy, are all seemingly in reaction to those results. But that’s not all.

RyanAir, the biggest airline by passengers flown in Europe, also sent a warning this week when its CEO Michael O’Leary cited weaker-than-expected consumer demand as a reason behind lower airfares coming over the next few months.