One simple change Southwest Airlines is making next year will end the phenomenon of passengers faking disabilities to board early, end the practice of seat saving, and make it easier to identify unruly passengers on board. That change is assigned seats, instead of the current free for all.
- July 29, 2025: Passengers can begin booking flights with assigned seating.
- January 27, 2026: Flights with assigned seating officially begin.
They’re making other unpopular changes, like devaluing Rapid Rewards points, ending free checked bags, and imposing basic economy restrictions on their cheapest fares. But assigned seats is one change that many passengers like.
- Southwest is adding extra legroom seats onto planes. They want to sell these, not give them away. And that prompted assigned seating
- And once they assigned seats, they don’t need everyone to line up in a specific order for boarding. The only benefit, even, to boarding early is not to have to gate check your bag (which will become more common with new checked bag fees, since everyone will want to carry-on instead).
Assigned seats, though, aren’t just a way to restrict premium seats to customers paying more for them. They are also a way to identify who is sitting in each seat. And that turns out to be useful when running a smooth operation, and dealing with problem passengers.
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
On every other airline, a passenger’s name and seat assignment is on the flight’s manifest for easy identification. Only Southwest Airline’s lacks this information.
- 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.
After David Dao was dragged off a United Airlines flight and bloodied in 2017, airlines frequently began taking everyone off of the plane rather than taking just one passenger off the plane when someone refused to simply get off when asked to do so. That way they wouldn’t have to have police come on and see matters escalate. United, in particular, became sensitive to having law enforcement on their aircraft for obvious reasons.
However it’s Southwest Airlines that can present the biggest challenge for law enforcement. FBI agents complain that Southwest Airlines is frustrating to deal with in unruly passenger situations on aircraft because passengers can’t easily be identified by their seat assignment.
Of course there are two other huge advantages seat assignments will bring,
- 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 - The end of Jetbridge Jesus flights where dozens of passengers board in wheelchairs, to get on first have their first pick of seats, but walk off just fine at the end of the flight themselves. This won’t just promote fairness, but will stop hogging wheelchairs and staff time pushing those chairs to make them more available for those that really need the assistance.
A friend shares a not-uncommon sight from Puerto Rico:
55 "handicapped" during pre-boarding, including 25 wheel chairs
On his return flight, 15 used wheelchairs to board, only 1 to deboard pic.twitter.com/gHgIsnzsq7
— Bachman (@ElonBachman) February 19, 2023
Another flight on @SouthwestAir, and I’m happy to report being witness to more miracles. These poor souls came seeking a flight, and instead were healed. 🙌🏻🙌🏻
Always grateful for witnessing the miraculous healing power of flight. pic.twitter.com/7TCYn2T6BB
— Dave Ruminates (@dave_ruminates) April 5, 2023
With one simple change – assigned seating – you’ll solve many of the problems that turn boarding a Southwest Airlines flight into an exercise in game theory. Not every change the airline is making is bad.
There was one huge benefit of open seating. If you often travel last-minute, on popular routes like EWR to SFO, all desirable seats are already occupied in Economy. So either you spring for First (which on these routes is extremely expensive, like $3,000 one-way expensive) or you slum it in the back row middle seat.
Or fly Southwest and board early enough to take the seat you want.
The wheelchair boarding/fake preboarding eligibility thing is ragebait. It happens in too infrequent quantities for me to care about.
I never preboard or pay for Early Bird. I have always sat in an aisle seat on Southwest flights.
Assigned seating has it’s value to boarding and passengers – BUT charging for seats is nothing but a money grab. If Southworst wanted to ingratiate themselves to ticket buyers, they would let ticket buyers pick their seats at no additional charge.
@David R. Miller — a money grab – you’re aware Southwest is a for-profit enterprise, correct? Breach of fiduciary duty to their shareholders NOT to grab that money.
I have sat on WN flights where the seat count did not match the expected passenger count; it is often because so many of their flights are multi-segment flights and people create their own unticketed routings. Taking 30 or more minutes to get it straightened out needs to go the way of the dinosaurs.
and I still don’t get why people rage against WN’s changes when they are simply doing what other airlines have done for years.
If WN got a premium for its freebies, they would keep them. but they don’t pay for any more than AA’s more room throughout coach.
It’s been a good day at VFTW – Gary is 6 for 6 today with posting legitimate content without clickbait
Also, just saying, when @E. Jack Youlater calls something ‘ragebait,’ that’s when you know a concept has ‘jumped the shark.’ Also, Taiwan is a free, independent country.