Southwest Airlines and Assigned Seating: A Slippery Runway
Always sensitive to market forces, the consistently profitable and shrewd Southwest Airlines knows that the flying public tends to have strong opinions them: people either laud or loathe the open seating, the crew’s attempts at humor, the minimal-frills service, and the other hallmarks of the cost-cutting, quirky Southwest way. But despite their ability to post soaring profit year after year while their competitors file for bankruptcy, Southwest Airlines may be at the beginning of a slippery runway if it does away with open seating.
While it won’t officially happen until at least 2008 (if at all), the advent of assigned seats on all Southwest Airlines flights would strike me as a sad sign that the company can no longer balance principles with profits the way it has for over 30 years. They’re worried that, as they start to move beyond their typical second-string airport market and into new locations, passengers unaccustomed to the unusual practices of the airline may be turned off unless assigned seats are offered. They’re worried that an increasingly cantankerous American public will become whinier, taking longer to board under the old open seating policy and thus contributing to delays. And of course, even loyal Southwest-loving customers may latch onto the assigned seating and start demanding other unnecessary services that will cause Southwest Airlines to lose its budget feel and its easy, fun, unpretentious edge: they’ll want first-class seating options, special business traveler lounges, more sophisticated frequent flyer programs, in-flight movies, full dinners, etc.
I know it’s alarmist of me to worry that a change in Southwest Airlines’ boarding procedures will signal the downfall of their well-crafted customer service and their cost-cutting genius. Yet I’ve always admired the relative simplicity and straightforwardness of Southwest’s model: they’ve opened up air travel to a whole new group of Americans who previously would not have flown. They made air travel cheap and even kitschy. The lack of pretension on Southwest Airlines is so refreshing that I’d hate to see it fade. Currently, there are no clamorings for customer upgrades, no wastes of time/energy on first-class service, and no excessive amenities to drive up costs through pampering and gratuitous fluff.
And when it comes to the topic of open vs. assigned seating, I frankly can’t think of a more fundamentally American approach than first-come, first-seated. Obviously Southwest Airlines lets people with special needs board first, but outside of that exception, the masses board based on their position in line – a method which rewards folks for getting to the airport (and to the gate) early. If you make that small sacrifice in time, you’re rewarded with a better choice of seats: not an unheard-of phenomenon!
After all, the last time I went to a movie theater for a two-hour film – roughly the length of a flight from Chicago to Denver – there was no assigned seating. The onus was on me as a customer to arrive early enough to select a desirable seat. Why shouldn’t air travel work the same way, especially since it saves Southwest Airlines money – savings which can be passed on to consumers in the form of lower fares? Instead, Southwest will resign itself to spending immense amounts of time, money, and energy developing software to handle assigned seating, training its thousands of agents, redesigning its website, and dealing with innumerable customers who will have problems, want to make changes, and so on. The result is, well, an airline a wee bit closer to Delta, Northwest, UnitedâÂ?¦.and a destination called Chapter 11.
Let’s hope that the admirable, innovative Southwest Airlines doesn’t let assigned seating become the start of its descent.
