Southwest Airlines lets passengers pick their seats on a first-come, first-served basis. You board earlier if you buy the most expensive tickets, if you’re a frequent traveler, or if you pay for early boarding. Or if you fake the need for a wheelchair.
That’s why Southwest Airlines has more wheelchair passengers than any other airline. It drives up the airline’s costs (they pay for the wheelchair service!) and cheats other customers out of better seats. And it makes a tremendous spectacle: the “Jetbridge Jesus” flight where passengers come on with a wheelchair to get the best seats, and miraculously walk without any assistance when the flight is over.
@SouthwestAir 15+ preboards. These all walked on. Fix this please. TPA 9/17 1650 hours. Check the video. Abuse of privilege. pic.twitter.com/2hkni1Z5T8
— Fred Vollinger (@fred_vollinger) September 17, 2024
This is terrible passengers who really need wheelchairs, with people who don’t need them taking up the scarce service. Those with a real need are forced to wait longer.
But this is all about to change, because Southwest is moving to assigned seating. Wheelchair passengers may board earlier but it doesn’t get them better seats.
That’s also going to be a huge help with misbehaving passengers. Right now when law enforcement comes on board the airline doesn’t know the identity of the problem passenger.
If there are more passengers on the plane than there are supposed to be, you don’t know who is supposed to be there and who isn’t. If a passenger in a specific seat is causing problems, you don’t immediately know who it is. If a problem passenger doesn’t identify themselves, you need to take everyone off and reboard them to know who’s still on the plane.
That, too, will change.
Fun times on my @SouthwestAir flight. Totally full, one ticketed woman didn’t have a seat so now they have to check everyone’s id to verify they’re supposed to be on the flight. pic.twitter.com/fM8qMj7TN4
— Stephanie L. (@Lady_Stephanie) April 29, 2024
This is also going to mean the end of seat saving. No more claiming 13 seats for your group or using a bag of donuts to claim a whole row of seats, and the ensuing conflict that comes from taking more space than your ticket allows.
Woman saving an entire row of plane seats behind her with donut bags.
byu/Hog_Fan inmildlyinfuriating
With one simple change – assigned seating – Southwest will solve many of the problems that turn boarding a Southwest Airlines flight into an exercise in game theory.
While I’m one of the few that actually likes part of how Southwest does seating today (but not lining up at the start of boarding), I don’t see the change as all good.
It’ll help Southwest’s bottom line, and not just on the revenue side selling premium and assigned seats. Wheelchair services are costly. This is also going to save Southwest at least $30 per wheelchair passenger.
Although we all hate paying more I’m happy to have a confirmed seat and not have someone knock me over trying to hoard a seat first in addition to other acts of bad behavior
On the other hand if they price to high I’m likely to simply fly another airline
And I’m thrilled to know the wheelchair club is finally getting canceled so folks who truly need it are good to go.
Southwest can still be liked when it assigns seats for free.
Air Canada and Westjet requires payment for seat assignments except for thr most expensive tickets. Even expensive, non-basic tickets charge for seat assignment. Canada is garbage. It is a stupid country full of people that want to rip off another person.
I think for shuttle flights (Dallas-Houston comes to mind), everyone seems to know each other and at least in Texas, you can open carry a beer, lol.
But you will always have people who feel entitled to cheat the system, just like my brother, David Biedermann. (He is successful, teased me as a kid, so I have no problem shaming him, lol). He literally changed the HTML of his boarding pass to say GROUP A instead of Group C, just because he was late 24 hours before.)
Did it work? Of course! Sigh.
Southwest joins (relatively) more civilized society.
@Jon Biedermann your comment was absolutely hilarious. I love putting friends, and brothers and sisters and family members on blast for their bad behavior, and then laughing at them. That is so awesome. They laugh when I do it to them and they know they’ve got it coming, so it’s all in good fun just like what it sounds like is your situation. Outstanding. Thanks for the good laugh. Tell your brother David Biedermann that I judge him, I judge him hard… but game respects game, so, nicely done.
I used to use Southwest for a lot of my short trips (2 hours or less) because they flew directly to my destination. I stopped several years ago because of the behavior or people. I just wanted to sit down and get to my destination. The staff was always super friendly, you took a seat and went. But people have a way ruining anything easy and convenient.
Even DL has some issues with pre-board for ‘passengers requiring further assistance’. However, the benefit is/was less.
I’ve seen folks hobble up with a collapsible.walking stick, then immediately fold it up and stride down the jetway, just past the gate-to-jetway door.
But I’ve never seen more than a couple.of those.on any given flight.
I think Southwest is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Time will tell if their new strategy will work.