Southwest to Offer Assigned Seats, Premium Options and Redeyes
Southwest Airlines is making a big shift, and moving away from its traditional boarding process among other changes.
The airline revealed today that it will start assigning seats and offer premium seating options for customers, as well as redeye flights.
The changes come after studying seating options, running tests and surveying customers. Southwest says it discovered that preferences have changed over the years and the vast majority of travelers now want to know where they are sitting before they get to the airport.
The airline says that surveys showed that 80% of its customers — and 86% of “potential” customers want an assigned seat.
In addition to assigning seats, Southwest will also offer a premium, extended legroom portion of the cabin that research shows many customers strongly prefer. Specific cabin layout details are still in design, but Southwest says it expects roughly one-third of seats across the fleet to offer extended legroom, in line with that offered by industry peers on narrowbody aircraft.
Southwest also announced today that it is adding 24-hour operation capabilities with the introduction of overnight, redeye flights.
Booking on initial routes is available today through Southwest.com, with the first overnight flights landing on Valentine’s Day 2025 in five initial nonstop markets: Las Vegas to Baltimore and Orlando; Los Angeles to Baltimore and Nashville; and Phoenix to Baltimore.
Southwest plans to phase in additional redeye flying in the carrier’s coming schedules as part of its multi-year transformation to a 24-hour operation.
The airlines says that redeye flying, coupled with continued reductions in turn-time through new technologies and procedures, is expected to provide incremental revenue and cost savings, enabling Southwest to fund nearly all new capacity over the next three years without incremental aircraft capital deployment.
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