‘End of the people’s airline’: Southwest abandons open seating after 53 years

Southwest Airlines announced Thursday that it will do away with its longtime practice of open seating, abandoning a feature that helped establish its egalitarian identity in the name of boosting revenue and adapting to evolving customer tastes.

The carrier, long known for its unique model of having passengers board in groups of 30 and then choose their seats once on board, said it will now assign seats and unveil “premium seating options” that offer more legroom. In its announcement, the carrier said it expects that about one-third of seats across its fleet will have extra legroom. The company did not provide a timeline for the changes.

The move quickly drew negative reaction from die-hard Southwest fans who say the airline is jeopardizing its identity.

Saty Reddy, a lawyer who lives in the Bay Area and flies Southwest frequently with his family, said the shift marks “the end of the people’s airline.”

Benét J. Wilson, a veteran aviation journalist and Southwest superfan who lives in Baltimore, said she woke up to “a ton of texts and messages from friends giving me this news.” The new policies will inevitably make Southwest feel different — but also more like its competitors, she said.

“It’s like another airline, any old plain airline,” Wilson said. “Southwest has swag and personality, bon vivant. Part of that was the open seating. Now I just feel like it will kind of change how the airline feels to me.”

Southwest fan Grant Goodman, 24, sent a message to a reporter Thursday morning saying he felt betrayed. The Atlanta-based actor described himself as “a dedicated front row, middle seat enthusiast.”

“My favorite endurance hobby was checking in at the 24-hour mark,” he said in an interview. “The button — I got it down.”

Goodman said he appreciated how passengers could book a flight 48 hours before departure, check in 24 hours in advance and still have a shot at a seat upfront.

“It was basically like a democracy,” he said.

The company acknowledged that changing the seating policy was a big shift for the airline, which boasts that it set out to “democratize the sky” with low-cost travel when it began offering service in 1971.

“Moving to assigned seating and offering premium legroom options will be a transformational change that cuts across almost all aspects of the company,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a statement.

The company said its research showed that 80% of its customers and 86% of “potential” customers prefer an assigned seat.

“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,” it said in a news release.

Jordan first hinted at the change in April. “Early indications both for our customers and for Southwest look pretty darn interesting,” he said at the time.

The changes are the most significant shift in decades for the airline, which built its reputation as a scrappy discount underdog but has evolved to become one of the dominant carriers in the United States. Even so, Southwest has been under pressure to boost revenue. As other airlines have found ways to charge for various “upgrades,” including more legroom and early boarding, Southwest’s model left it with few options.

The carrier will also begin offering overnight “red-eye” flights, confirming an announcement from earlier this year. It said the flights will begin in February, with the first overnight flight landing on Valentine’s Day 2025.

Ryan Fisher, a digital marketing analyst and frequent Southwest flier based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said the switch is not a surprise, but it’s still disappointing.

“If people are willing to pay up for that seat guarantee, I get it,” Fisher said in a direct message on X. “I’m just not that person … so this news overall is disappointing for a Southwest loyalist like myself.”

Southwest fan Goodman anticipates that the airline’s changes will result in higher prices for passengers. He expects Southwest to continue offering free checked bags, a differentiating perk the company’s leadership has promised to keep. But he mourned the loss of the open-seating policy.

“It was the commoner’s airline,” he said. “That feeling, I think, has kind of fallen a little bit.”

Edward Russell contributed to this report.