Are all of the changes Southwest Airlines is making too much, too fast? Not for the passengers who have been largely negative on this like checked bag fees and basic economy restrictions, one thing after another taken away from customers with nothing really added that makes life better.
Here what I’m troubled by is whether they’ve taken on too many projects to quickly in order to actually pull them off without significant service disruptions and customer inconvenience. Enilria writes “I think this transition is going to be a bumpy ride.” That may understate matters significantly.
The guest host this week on Airlines Confidential was former American Airlines CIO Maya Leibman, who talked about all of the technology changes behind the scenes that have to happen:
- for paid seats across different aircraft seating configurations (even though they only operate 737s)
- the programming for bag fees – with standard pricing but you want to be able to change it; plus exceptions for elites and cardmembers; the data feed you need from Chase on cardmembers; plus refund processes when you accidentally charge someone who was entitled to a waiver
- all the airport signage on bags fly free that has to be removed, which has accumulated for years not just at gates but on jetbridges and in ticketing lobbies; literally finding everything and scrubbing references also to travel credits never expire.
- now they’re going to have to reconfigure all of their gate areas across the system, too, removing pilons.
And Southwest has never been a super tech-forward airline! That’s why their operation melted down at Christmas 2022 and couldn’t recover – their tech couldn’t track planes and crew and schedules couldn’t be rebuilt electronically. Airline staff were rebuilding the system by hand.
They’ve already been taking up IT resources to devalue Rapid Rewards points and reduce points-earning on the cheapest tickets, and still have to implement Basic Economy restrictions. They’re changing seat map layouts to accommodate additional legroom seating (which means taking away legroom from existing standard coach seats on 737-800 and MAX 8 aircraft).
Plus, they’ve been deeply engaged in IT projects to make their departure procedures more electronic, stop having to print out things, in order to hopefully speed up boarding at the same time they’ll be slowing it down with gate checked bags as passengers carry more items onboard the aircraft (and they’ve been slow to add larger overhead bins) and no longer have the incentive to board quickly to nab a better seat once on the plane.
Southwest Airlines is going to be spending a ton of money on this transition, in hopes of generating more revenue, even though they’ve said in the past their analysis shows that changes like the ones they’ve announced would be net negative for the business as they chase away customers. But they have new investor activist-appointed directors who have a gut sense that these things work, because they ‘worked’ at those directors’ former airlines, and management had to go along to save their jobs.
But have they fully considered the operational consequences of a ‘big bang’ making so many changes all at once? Do they have the capacity to actually implement everything on schedule? Or is Southwest going to be a mess to fly for a time – as they try to figure out charging for bags, charging for seats, whether tickets are fully changeable or not?
Nope. Southwest will be acquired, most likely by United, and will simply disappear. Nothing lasts forever and the decision (foolish and it will prove to be) will end up destroying Southwest Airlines.
Grab your popcorn, this is going to be a good shi show.
It’s all going depend on extensive testing of new IT. Companies often skimp on this because it takes time and money. Result when it goes live it’s a total cluster. So we will see.
Husband has hundreds of thousands of A List Preferred miles banked, and I’m his Companion Pass. He travels on WN for biz almost weekly. I’ve told him that unless I’m coming with, he should return to United and give Delta a try. Southwest removing everything about them that makes them different – i.e., egalitarian with good customer service, will make them indistinguishable for other airlines. So may as well transition to an airline that has international routes so we can use miles for vacations. Right now the only big vacays on WN have been to HI. These “activist investors” are not that – they’re corporate raiders who are going to strip WN for parts and sell off the routes for big money. I had initially predicted WN demise in 5 years, I now predict it will cease to exist in 2.
No freakin’ way… dumpster fire, indeed. Personally, I’m ready to hear the total bullshit out of whoever has to be the spokesperson for the airline and/or Elliott, when the true shit hits the fan. They will have to have #45/47 levels of lying to survive in that role. I’d say, buy shares of companies that make pitchforks–guaranteed return on investment.
@johnny — Oh yes, popcorn ready. It’ll be the folks who haven’t been paying any attention at all…WHAM! Expectations subverted (yet again), like the ending of GoT or the StarWars sequels.
@James Thurber — Tim and I hope it’ll be by Delta, either the Northwest way (a merger) or the PanAm way (purchase of assets). Time will tell, right @Tim Dunn?
The checkin desk people and gate agents who are on the frontline are going to have to take the verbal abuse they get from angry flyers. That is not going to be a fun job.
@1990……. you’re constant use of foul four letter words does not enhance the quality of your comments, nor does it disguise the fact that you’re nothing but a shrill shill.
Elliot has to have an exit strategy. I have wondered what it was and when it will happen. All of the changes will result in extra money coming in before the cost of doing them comes due. People will prepay for a seating assignment. They will prepay for luggage. It is possible that the cash on hand will go up before the changes take place at the first boarding under the new rules. That would be an ideal time to take profit and sell. At the time of that boarding and after is when chaos will break out.
It is interesting to see pilon show up again.
You raise valid points about the limitations of rushing too many changes into a lackluster IT department deprived of funding and resources. May the force be with those who fly SW and the employees who have to endure the brunt of these capricious changes that assault’ the former friendly customer policies of SW.
@Miguel95 — Say what you want to say, señor. You do you. I’ve made my points, on substance, and also sometimes with cultural references that I do very much enjoy. If you want to make no ‘real’ points other than to attack my person or my word choice, that’s semantics, not a position or an actual discussion. Now, I’ve seen your comments before on here—I know that we probably disagree on partisanship and policy—but instead of making that clear to others, you pretend like light ‘profanity’ is disqualifying? Heck, no. Shit, yeah. Pretty tame stuff. So, nice try. Anyway, are you like @Mike P, and want to call me ‘ignorant’ or some other silly name? It’s ok, hypocrisy is not a crime, but it is literally currency on the internet among strangers. Feed me more, please.
Why would United or anyone else bother with buying an entire airline when they only want parts of it? If anything, I expect Southwest to be cut into scrap and sold off in pieces (planes, gates, slots, etc.).
@gary: You left out one very large challenge. Old tickets will follow the old rules but post-May 27 tickets will follow the new rules. That will confuse both customers and employees. A PR disaster is virtually inevitable.
@jns is on the right track, but the PR disaster will occur in early June, long before the revenue effects are known or reported. I hope Elliott is locked in and can’t sell it’s stock until the effects fully unfold. They deserve to get what they have asked for, good and hard.
I think it’ll be like New Coke.
I think this is a one time trick but yes I actually think they can. SWA ees are generally pretty competent. They will get through the short term because competence and culture can’t be killed overnight. You have some momentum. But it is coming and that’s when you flip the business to someone who can “fix the culture.” It’s the circle of life.
Southwest new ONE RES /Amadeus system plus its New Ops suites boarding IT system already has the ability for all these transactions.
Southwest has been planning for this Switch since it Bought AirTran.
The ONLY reason GK didn’t pull the trigger was they saw a Cheap option in training cost to DUMB down the new system to the Old Southwest way of doing things.
In addition during that time period Southwest was enjoying Record profits so they didn’t want to rock the boat with a massive model change.
Also The MAX8 grounding threw a huge monkey wrench into everything so WN put a lot of these things on the back burner.
During the Covid they seriously thought making the switch then since travel was so depressed it could have easily been done and spun as an essential need coming out of the post pandemic. But Travel rebounded faster than expected and profits soon returned But not as fast as record highs as they expected.
Post Covid travel trends changed how everyone travels and more people are now willing to pay for a little more space vs being cramming in like sardines.
The ULCC airlines have seen the worst of This shift even at the basic economy price point hence the reason why Frontier and Spirit are add a premium upgrade experience and seating.
Southwest HAS to change or be seriously left behind. Its entire business model is just not sustainable anymore.
As Post traveling trends have kept changing more and more people already have jumped the fence to other airlines with a slightly better buy experience.
Southwest without this option Threw everything it had into the market with the hopes Everyone would flock to Southwest.
The number since Covid Don’t lie while Southwest is turning a small profit it’s not a constant trend anymore.
And the never expiring credits,free bags,no fare difference for any flight free Same Day Standby Didn’t move the needle at all.
They you add on the People gaming WN own system by buying cheap and just asking for Pre Boarding devalued the it’s Upgraded products like business select,Early Bird, Anytime fares and last
Ditch effort Wanna Get away Plus.
So post meltdown and Bob and his team knew it was time to implement the changes like adding seat assignments and Extra leg room seats.
They seriously studied a Basic Economy fare and unbundling the Bag Fees but decided against it originally.
But once they saw adding Southwest tickets to every salable platforms the WN price point wasn’t getting the revenues they had hoped for.
Basically Bags Fly Free wasn’t even coming close 90% of the data showed The consumer still went to the ever other Airline regardless of the cost to Check a Bag.
So Southwest Airlines HAD to evolve or die.
Now they Bad part of this change is
Elliot management Lead BOD at Southwest don’t have that Nostalgic LUV affair with WN Brand so instead of trying to
To keep spinning the narrative I’m a lovey-dovey Way they ripped the Bandaid off and made it happen sooner than BJ Three year plan.
But Elliot’s doing it now plan while
Firing employees will only derail the entire process because now the motivation all of Southwest employees had for this new seat assignment era is completely Gone!
Now Everyone gonna work just hard enough not to get fired.
I am flying SWA in June. Very concerned it has potential to be a “S” show. I purposely did not schedule any tight layovers.
I agree, there’s a lot of potential for a very painful transition for both employees and customers. So much to keep track of. Lot of people working tirelessly nonstop behind the scenes, special shoutout to them. Don’t have any Southwest flights booked currently but given a choice I’d would probably wait until things stabilize a bit.
On another related note, I flew on a couple Southwest flights the other day up in the first few rows and I think I got planes that were already fitted in the premium seats? Not sure, it had been a while. Felt like a little more space.
Little mention of Elliot’s plan: Herb insisted SW own all its planes … they’re a huge asset. Elliott wants them sold, leased back, money from the sales will be used to increase dividends for stockholders. Elliott will get over 10% of what should be Billions$$$. SW is stuck with the debt that it will then have to service. Some refer to that as ‘looting’!
I predict major disruptions. I agree with Gary on this one!
Southwest is screwed. I put up with it for the prices. If I am now paying to fly my luggage, it is over. It is an economy airline with economy amenities. They can’t compete.
@Miguel95: Please lurn the difference between your, you’re (you are) and yore. Diktion matters.
Now that Southwest finally has a CIO again, Bob is ready to upgrade its lone Commodore 64 with another 32K of RAM and and 2nd floppy disk drive…plus a back up 1,200 baud Hayes modem.
the sheer number of changes is going to challenge WN and its customers…. but there isn’t a single one of these changes that WN is making that other carriers haven’t also made.
The real challenge is that WN needs its employees to execute all of these new strategies at a time where they are very unsure about their future.
and 1990, you and I agree about a lot so I will say that I agree w/ those that say that continual use of 4 letter words degrades what someone contributes to a conversation. It. Just. Isn’t. Necessary.
@Tim Dunn — I’ll work on that. I hope you’ll note that I rarely use them; in fact, today may have been one of the first times. The one that is synonymous with ‘feces’ is quite tame. My disappointment got the better of me over how this once-great airline is being ruined for a few folks at the top to immensely profit off its downfall. I still find that to be disgusting. I have not dared to call anyone personally on here, specifically, by any such four-letter words, though sometimes I’d like to. But, yes, there are better ways to make our points. Agreed. Respect.
@Fordamist Ledearn — Bingo. Follow the money. That never fails. Elliott isn’t trying to run an airline or business; it’s a smash-and-grab; look no further than the 1980s in the USA, or 1990s in Russia, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for more egregious examples of rampant privatization of industries and businesses, and the detrimental affects on real people.
@Principal Lewis — Sick burn! Bah!
@Fordamist Ledearn
Same results as a leveraged buyout but without a few steps, and the company goes right in the shitter while Elliott cashes out. A tale as old as M&A. It’s crazy that an activist investors can make this happen with such a small share
I don’t think the new top brass actually want Southwest Airlines to succeed. Why else would they remove all of what made Southwest unique? No more incentive to pick SW. This airline will be bought, merged and/or liquidated to get the most cash possible. I won’t ever choose SW airlines. Why would I ?
I was one customer Southwest lost due to wheelchair frauds and ignorant trash seat saving. Now it will be like every other airline. How convenient their schedule is and cost will determine who I fly with.
Southwest is trying to be a Delta. They are no Delta – they’ll end up as a Spirit, and with fewer passengers. Soon enough, they’ll join the ranks of Eastern, Lufthansa, People’s Express, Sears and Radio Shack.
Until now, I flew Southwest exclusively for the past twenty years. This, even though the nearest airports they serve are 90 minutes to two hours away, while I live only ten minutes away from another airport. They were different: Fares were reasonable, flights were on time, there was an ample number of flights. Rapid Rewards was in fact rapid – every 10 flight segments got you a free flight, and of course, there was open seating and no charge for checked baggage. And now: They are hardly a “budget” carrier. They cut a number of flights, including nonstops and direct flights (and admitted to Price Fixing in 2017, paying a 15 million dollar settlement), Rapid Rewards changed to a system based on dollars instead of flights, reward points devalued several times, open seating and free baggage are soon to fall by the wayside. And we can’t forget the fantastic job they did in December of 2022 – when they ceased operations for three days so they could locate their planes and crew. As for on-time performance, well, if they were an employee at any business, they would they fired.
There is now nothing to set Southwest apart from other airlines. Nothing. As a result. I will only be using them when flights from the airport near me are unavailable. Of course, I’ll exhaust my Rapid Rewards points first – before they devalue them again.
WN is basically done as a long term airline. These investors are idiots.
I currently fly just barely not enough segments to make A-list (22 LY, just couldn’t justify doing the extra) but that’s about to plummet. Gonna swing back to AA and start picking up more DL probably too.
I now think Tommy Wiseau is in charge at Southwest Airlines. There is absolutely NO other reason any human, with either 1. airline knowledge 2. airline IT knowledge – would pull all this off in the same month, let alone week. Err even day.
I mean, seriously. We ARE watching “THE PLANE” by Tommy Wiseau, right?
I’m upset at the changes too but I can definitely see times when I would still choose Southwest – mainly for unique non-stop routes of if their tickets are cheapest. Sure, these changes would probably make me less likely to choose Southwest, but nothing has been a dealbreaker. Regardless, agreed with @Dan in that I need to exhaust my reward points as soon as possible.
@1990 You be you! It actually took me a few reads to figure out what the offending word was (huh, wham??) since it’s a pretty ubiquitous term in society.
What an absolutely ridiculous posting. It’s called a ‘big bang’ approach in the airline IT space, and it is not uncommon (though not ideal). Southwest has been hosted on the largest, most capable passenger service system in the world since 2014 (Amadeus’ Altea). It is light years ahead of anything any competitor or in house system has been able to achieve. The fact none of its capabilities in the seating, baggage, or ancillaries relm have been utilized was a factor of Southwest’s business model up until now. As long as Southwest does its testing and due diligence, the implementation will be fine. Good grief.
Wish I could dump the tickets I have for a round tripper in July. This is going to be a nightmare.
Bag feed are already in their system…they are just set to zero. The kiosk software has always presented it. I’d assume the same with the entitlements. I think SWA ops will handle it…it’s going to be pax who show up and didn’t hear the news that will be upset.
Seats …that’s a next year problem. So this isn’t all at once.
Boarding? Well … honestly…. 1 to 9 is the same boring set up as the legacies. Again I suspect that it’s more about pulling their custom code out and just using the same back end configuration everyone else is using.
No…I don’t luv any of it …because honestly…. I chose them because they actually did it differently than all the other legacies. What will be interesting is to see if all of this has any discernable impact. My loyalty now is going to be lowest cost for what I’m flying …which means SW will most likely lose an A Lister
Buh Bye Southwest!
That’s exactly what that investment firm wants to do, gut SWA, and sell off the assets. It’s pretty sad actually, that this has happened to them, for the past 30 years their the only airline ive flown on.
@L737 — Yeah, these days, I’m not really sure which ‘four-letter-words’ offend the most, though, over the years George Carlin’s so-called ‘7 words you can never say on television’ have been water-down. Sure, the s-word was on there. And the p-word, but isn’t what you think it is (it was ‘piss’ not the one that’s more like the c-word), which again, for urine, that is so freaking tame compared to today’s typical vulgarities heard on most Middle School playgrounds, even.
The FCC (which is supposed to regulate this for TV in the USA at least) doesn’t police indecency like it used to, not to mention that ‘community standards’ change frequently in the internet/social media age, and will likely change again, depending on who’s in power and whether they attempt to diminish or censor political expression (peaceful protest, for example, is a recent ‘hot topic’ if you follow), so it’s not like anything is actually specifically ‘banned’ per se, and it’s still probably best to consider word choice on a case-by-case basis, evaluating for context, considering satire, and the audiences.
Obscenity is still ‘illegal,’ but the best way to describe it is “I know it when I see it” which was used in 1964 by US Supreme Court Justice Potter–most would include pornography, gore, etc. There’s a legal analysis called the ‘Miller test’ used to review the so-called ‘prurient interest’, whether it is ‘patently offensive’, and if it ‘lacks serious value,’ but all that gobbledygook is more for the lawyers and judges to argue over (if we even have those guys serving us for much longer as it is anyway).
To bring it all home, why this matters is that when you read ‘bad news’ about how one of the once-great airlines is being purposely destroyed by a hedge fund so a few super rich dudes can add more money to their pile of gold, like a dragon hoarding it, you may say to yourself one of these ‘dirty’ words, or even write on a site like VFTW, and it really depends on who’s running that site, whether they want to moderate such words or not. I respect if Gary thinks it’s too much. Either way, nice to be able to share some thoughts here with y’all.
Southwest doing all these changes while not having an even somewhat premium leaning product like Spirit’s Big Front Seat to offer is doomed to fail.
Of course it will be painful for all involved, but they are not going anywhere. They will lose all that made them loved by some folks, but they will adapt when schedule is still best for those folks.
They also do have a whole new clientele to look forward to — those who didn’t like the cattle call of their current boarding. One can hope the joke telling, singing, dancing, playing games, and overall foolishness of some of their flight attendants halts as well. I’m probably in the minority, but I want a quiet and peaceful flight – not one where the intercom is filled with games, jokes, singing, etc. There’s a market for that for sure and that’s been their target for decades now. Many people love it. But they are going after a different clientele — one who would prefer quality/quiet/peaceful flights with pre-determined seat assignments versus a Hunger Games type of approach to boarding. I’ve avoided them for ages due to the cattle call of boarding. Now I will probably gladly buy a ticket on them once things eventually settle down in a couple of years.
GK made all kinds of promises to employees and Customers throughout his tenure, none of which he delivered but were the directly responsible for the meltdown of 2022. For many years he promised Customers to implement working WIFI on the Aircraft. To this day the WIFI is a crap shoot when I fly. Not all change is good, but there was definitely a need for some changes. This is more like watching the preening of the victorious Mob Boss who just confirmed the demise of a rival. Study their record.
I’ve been through several software revisions and implementations and they are not easy! Takes lots of effort, talent, direction, and realistic due dates to make it happen. And you still have the physical changes like the seats on the jets, removing pilons at the gates, trying employees on new procedures, etc.
Elliot may just end upon looking like a complete idiot when it hits the fan, customers revolt, revenue drops, losses mount, and WN becomes the poster boy of failed corporate raiders.
Reminds me of Texas Air and Frank Lorenzo , or TWA and Carl Icahn.
At least JetBlue had the capacity to call off Icahn’s most recent attempt. I give Ms Joanna credit, she did a better job compared to Bob Jordan in calling off the vultures.
The above should read, “…training employees on new procedures, etc.”
I hope that all of the people who say that they will now buy tickets on Southwest Airlines actually do that. My experience is that most people talk a good game but don’t follow through. I think that Southwest Airlines will actually lose customers as the changes are enacted. The results will play out in publicly available metrics over the next few years. Let us see who is closer to what really happens.