Southwest Airlines is revamping its product with extra legroom seats, less legroom in back of the aircraft, redeye flying and partnerships with other airlines.

We can expect to see planes reconfigured (50-100 aircraft per month) to offer extra legroom seating throughout 2025. This will mean less legroom, though still more than at United, Delta and American, for regular coach. They expect to make seats assignable for early 2026 flying beginning in mid-2025.

The basic problem with Southwest Airlines is that they’ve outgrown their model. They were the most consistently profitable airline for decades – racking up 47 straight years of profits, even through 9/11 and the Great Recession – with a simple formula. They had low costs, a single fleet type, and simple customer-friendly policies.

Now, however, Southwest is no longer a low cost carrier. They lack long haul flying and partnerships. They can’t serve small markets bringing connecting feed to their larger planes. And they don’t offer premium products that customers want to buy.

The thing is that changing their model takes time. They’re going to offer more premium seating, but until that’s reliably offered across their fleet customers are going to luck into it without paying for it.

Southwest can’t sell premium seats until they have enough planes converted to be sure that the plane operating a given flight will have the new seats. They’re converting planes throughout 2025, but it’ll be 2026 flights that have these assigned seats.

That means you become increasingly likely throughout 2025 to wind up with a plane that has premium seats, but where seats are still available on a first-come, first-served basis. You’ll board and be able to just sit in a seat with extra legroom.

For 2025, Southwest Airlines passengers are going to be getting more than they pay for. As the fleet modification approaches completion, it will be nearly one-third of seats and therefore more than one-third of passengers who get more than they pay for.

That’s going to make Southwest an increasingly better value proposition to fly, for a short period of time. Come 2026, it will be Southwest that benefits from these seats in terms of higher fees. But while passengers are getting them free it’s a modest windfall.