Tag Archives for southwest airlines.
A new survey of customers reveals that Southwest is scared. Southwest is asking just how much their passengers hate what they’ve done.
Southwest Airlines is going to start confiscating passenger bags at the gate on almost every flight once they begin charging for checked bags in two months.
Southwest Airlines flight 3278 almost took off from a taxiway at Orlando International Airport at around 9:30 a.m. on Thursday. The Boeing 737-800 was flagged down by air traffic control as it approached 70 knots according to ADS-B data before hitting the brakes.
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.
Everyone is mad mad at Southwest Airlines for abandoning its business model, customer focus, and core principles. They’re laying off employees, outsourcing, eliminating free checked bags, moving to (paid) assigned seats and devaluing Rapid Rewards.
So now is the perfect time for another airline to go after their customers aggressively, court them, and win them over. American Airlines is doing that – but just isn’t really telling anyone about it?
When Southwest Airlines moves to assigned seating they will no longer line everyone up prior to boarding. Like the rest of the airline’s moves, Southwest’s boarding process will converge towards being much more like other airlines.
Gone will be the stanchions, and having passengers line up by group and number. In its place with be 9 boarding groups.
For the first time in company history, Southwest Airlines let go of 1,700 non-union employees at its headquarters. Employees were banned from corporate headquarters and firings took place online.
Now, in addition to major business changes like selling seat assignments and charging for checked bags, the airline is going to be outsourcing its skycap service.
American, Delta and United can fly bigger planes and fill them with connecting passengers from small cities using smaller aircraft. Southwest can’t and that puts them at a disadvantage even keeping up with 737s. That’s a big reason why United is beating them in Denver, Delta chasing them from Atlanta, and so on.
Basic economy fares and changes to the validity of flight credits may be terrible for Southwest Rapid Rewards redemptions, on top of the reduction in points-earning and changes to how award tickets are priced.
Jordan no longer leads the airline, he carries water for others above him who aren’t giving him the space to make decisions. He likely doesn’t need the job. Why is he sacrificing his integrity to front these changes? It’s time to walk away, and signal that the place he’s worked since 1988 does not exist any longer.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
