Goodbye Cattle Call! How Southwest Will Transition To A More Traditional Carrier

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Southwest announced a series of changes as it seeks profits by pivoting to acting like a more traditional airline.

The airline has long resisted assigned seating, preferring open seating which helps board and turn around planes more quickly. Over the years though the open cattle call turned into 3 boarding groups and then boarding numbers within each of those groups. But for over half a century it maintained open seating.

In 2010, AirTran poked fun at Southwest’s cattle call:

Southwest had the last laugh though, it bought out Airtran to have one less low-cost competitor, and then sold off its Boeing 717 fleet to Delta.

The airline has now announced that they will remove most of their non-hub flights from Atlanta.

Service from Atlanta to Cleveland, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Greenville, Jackson, Jacksonville, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Sarasota will be eliminated, and Atlanta to Cancun service will be suspended. So much for all that money on Airtran.

The airline will double down on its Nashville hub instead, adding new flights there.

Chicago/ORD, Fort Lauderdale, Oakland, and Hawaii will see flight reductions as the airline removes unprofitable flying. We flew from Maui to Kauai on Southwest earlier this year and were shocked at how empty the flight was. It’s no surprise that interisland flying will be cut by 20% to address that.

Southwest will ditch their open seating next year, in favor of assigned seats including extra legroom seats. Legroom on the 737-800 and Max8 will be reduced from 32″-33″ to 31″ to allow for 68 extra legroom seats with a 34″ pitch without removing any seats from the plane. Slimline seats will also help the airline avoid removing seats from the plane to accomplish that.

The 31″ seat pitch still compares favorably to AA, Delta, and United, which have 30-31″ pitches, and to Frontier and Spirit, which have punishing 28″ pitches. JetBlue typically has a 32″ pitch.

Legroom on the 737-700 remains at 31″, and the airline will remove 6 seats to get 40 extra legroom seats with a whopping 36″ seat pitch.

Southwest will sell seat assignments, but provide seat assignments or extra legroom seat assignments for free with higher fare classes.

A List elites will get to board early, select seat assignments on the lowest fares, and get extra legroom seats if still available 48 hours before departure.

A List Preferred elites will get to board early and select extra legroom seat assignments on the lowest fares at the time of booking.

Southwest credit card holders will also get seating benefits that will be announced next year.

The airline will also be adding in-seat power and larger overhead bins over the next few years.

For now, the airline is sticking with 2 free checked bags on all fares. Southwest calculated that the money earned by charging for bags ($1B-$1.5B annually) would be more than offset by lower market share (-$1.8B annually) as passengers would switch to other airlines.

Southwest will also continue to offer free changes and cancelations on all fares, with travel credits that never expire.

Southwest hopes to turn planes around even faster than they do today, which at 49 minutes, is the fastest average narrowbody in the US. That’s 27 minutes faster than United and 25 minutes faster than Delta manages to turn their narrowbody planes around. Color me skeptical that they’ll be able to accomplish an even faster turn with assigned seats.

Southwest has traditionally shied away from red-eyes. It actually simply lacked the software to allow them to run a 24 hour operation, so they always had a couple hours where no planes were in the air. But the airline has invested in IT since its December 2022 meltdown and is ready to rapidly expand red-eye flights. Opening Hawaii up to red-eyes to cities like Las Vegas will allow for seamless connections to dozens of other cities that weren’t previously possible. The airline predicts up to 33 daily red-eyes next year and up to 50 daily red-eyes in 2026.

One big change for the airline will be partnerships with other airlines. The airline announced a partnership with Icelandair and another partner coming later next year. Southwest will sell seats that will connect Southwest flights with partner flights, with assigned seats the whole way. Perhaps best of all, I assume that bags will be free as well when sold that way, so it may soon pay to connect!

The Icelandair partnership will begin in Baltimore before expanding. Icelandair also announced that it will fly to Nashville next year, undoubtedly to take advantage of feed from the Southwest hub there.

Overall, I think these changes are pretty savvy, though many will bemoan the loss of open seating. These changes have been forced on Southwest by activist investor Elliott, which isn’t happy with these changes and wants Southwest to fire its CEO and completely copy traditional carrier policies. I think Southwest did a good job compromising on some of their policies, while still remaining somewhat unique. But it remains to be seen if Elliott will get its way and make more drastic changes.

What do you think of these changes?