There’s nothing worse than when a company takes away a service or downgrade its product and acts like it’s doing customers a favor.
Having Panera bread hand you an empty cup when you order a coffee there, isn’t the company letting you make it your way. It’s the company passing off some of the work to a consumer.
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Allowing you to make it your way, would involve having the option of having a worker put your beverage together or doing it yourself. In reality, both options can sometimes work together as you can add more milk or sugar to your liking.
Companies don’t like to ever frame something in a way that shows they are giving you less and charging you more. Disney World, for example, took away the free FastPass+ system and changed it to a similar offering that now costs money.
The company was not, however, arrogant enough to run commercials, acting like it did done visitors a favor.
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Southwest Airlines, however, has not shown similar restraint. It’s removing one of the hallmarks of the airline that was free and has chosen to replace it with something that costs extra.
There’s no other way to put it, passengers will pay more to fly on Southwest, if they want any sort of decency seat. That will be happening while they also have to pay for baggage and deal with having bags Gate checked because more people bring carry-ons now that checked bags are not free.
Southwest Airlines charging for seat assignments
For all of its existence Southwest Airlines LUV has offered first come, first-served open seating on its flights. It does sell ways to get a better spot in line and it checks higher-level loyalty program members in sooner, so they get a better boarding position, but assigned seats were not sold.
That was part of the democratic charm of the airline. Your ticket guaranteed you a seat, but not any particular one. If you remembered to check-in to your flight at the first possible moment, you almost certainly got a boarding position good enough to avoid a middle seat.
In addition, families traveling together might not get their pick of seats, but most flights had neighboring seats available in the back of the plane.
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Southwest is dropping its first-come-first served pick your own seat boarding next year and it has already begun selling assigned seating as well as extra legroom seating. The airline is framing this as a positive.
“For your comfort, we’re introducing seat options that allow you to choose the experience you prefer. This includes options to select where you want to sit and upgrade to an Extra Legroom seat, giving you more choices when you travel with us,” it posted on its website.
Southwest Airlines slaps its fans in the face
“Choose the experience you prefer” means paying for something that used to be free. Offering “Extra Legroom” seats also mean that regular seats now have less legroom.
These changes have made Southwest just like every other legacy carrier it fought so hard to not be like for decades. You can argue that some customers probably never liked open seating, but most of the airline’s most-loyal customers liked the idea of low prices an no added fees.
Key changes coming to Southwest:
- Assigned seating begins Jan 27, 2026
- Extra-legroom and preferred seats become paid add-ons
- Bags Fly Free ends for most passengers as of May 2025
- Loyalty status and fare tiers now determine perks
They’re certainly not celebrating the addition of being charged for seat assignments like the people in the commercial above.
Southwest has dropped nearly everything that made the airline special. Having to pay for an assigned seat joins paying for checked bags as the two most obvious changes, but the airline has also made lots of other small changes that downgrade its experience.
Related: Disney World breaks its own longstanding rule (Walt would not approve)
Charging for WiFi per flight segment rather than per day really rubs salt in the wound of someone already facing a day where they have to make a connection. Downgrading the value of the Rapid Rewards loyalty program is a similarly subtle insult to passengers, and in this case, the airline’s best one.
These changes will fix Southwest’s bottom line and make more money for the airline, because passengers have limited choices. But Southwest regulars are certainly not celebrating them.
