Southwest airlines switching to reserve seating

Southwest airlines switching to reserve seating

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
And Alex Stone ABC News is joiningthe conversation right now, and yeah,
Southwest Airlines is always differentiated itself bybeing a more relaxed airline with open seating
policies and all of that. Now, I don't know if you were on
with me, Alex. It mayhave been another time when I was talking
to I can't remember, but I'vealways always said this is something I wish

(00:24):
that they would do, and Isaid, look, I'll even pay.
They have a lot of It's perfectfor me the way that this sets up.
It's the best carrier for me touse at the lion's share of my
flights which are to Las Vegas,and I use them constantly, so on
and so forth. It's very reasonableall those things. But man, I'm
excited about some of these changes,Alex. You were excited. Other people

(00:47):
are angry about them. You know, there are Southwest lovers who love the
open seating that if you book atthe last minute, that it doesn't mean
that you're going to get a middleseat, you know, like you would
on Delta United, where you bookand you look at the seating chart and
everything is only middle seats. Lefty, that you could pay to board earlier,
and so there are people who don'tlike this, but yeah, I

(01:07):
mean, they're known for their freebags. That's going to remain. They're
also known for their open seating andone class of service, and two of
those three are going to go away. So today Southwest executives said the customer
preferences change over time and to stayviable in the industry, and they've had
some struggles recently that Southwest has toadapt, and adapting means assigned seating and

(01:30):
a premium class not going to befirst class. They're not going to do
meals and bigger seats, but it'llbe more in legroom. And then they're
also adding in red eye flight,something that Southwest has historically not done.
They've been kind of proud about notdoing it, and they have late flights,
but they've never done true overnight redeye flights and they're going to begin
doing that. You can already bookthose. The special seating, the premium

(01:55):
seating, and the assigned seating willbe sometime in twenty twenty five. They
got to figure all that out.But today Bob Jordan, the CEO of
Southwest, said, our teams havebeen hard at work evaluating fundamental changes to
our seating, cabin and boarding procedures. So they've got to convert the around
eight hundred planes that they have andthe new planes delivered are going to come

(02:15):
with the new layout. The layoutfirst has to be completely designed. They're
working on it now. That hasto be approved by the FAA. And
you know, Mark, there wererumors a couple of months ago that they
were considering this or that some ofthe plane would be assigned and some of
it open seating. But they decided, they said that they had to come
to all assigned seating, and headded, our research showed that eighty percent

(02:35):
of our customers prefer an assigned seatand eighty six percent of our potential customers
prefer an assigned seat. Further,when a customer defects from Southwest to one
of our competitors, are open seatingpolicy is cited as the number one reason
war. Yeah. Now they saythey will not be charging for bags.
The two bags lie free will continue. That will stay. That's been debated
over the years, so they've triedto figure it out because of the amount

(02:58):
of money they could make off ofcharging for bags. They're not quite sure
yet what boarding is going to belike they want to keep it to where
one gate agent can do it bythemselves. But if they're going to do
the A one through thirty, thirtythrough sixty BC, they don't know quite
yet. He said, they haveto figure that out. But he also
said coming out of the pandemic thatpeople expect more out of an airline.

(03:19):
Most airlines make their money off offirst class. You know, first class
costs a lot, doesn't cost theairline a lot more, and so they
need to cash in on that aswell. And he said a lot of
things changed. I mean, ifyou have changing demand patterns, we have
customer preference that is always changing.It changed to some extent also coming out
you know of the pandemic. Youcan always debate, you know, when

(03:40):
at the end of the day,it's the right thing to do right now.
So they're going to do it andget a lot of die hard Southwest
fans are not happy about it.One thing we did find out today from
them though, is if you hadto say where when somebody is redeeming their
rapid rewards miles, typically they're goingto do it for a leisure trip,
not normally for business. So wheredo people the number one place that rapid

(04:01):
rewards miles are used for for leisuretravel. Where are they going Las Vegas?
No, Well, for West coastfolks, yes, But overall,
he said, it's a Ruba isthe number one route flights into Aruba that
are rapid rewards miles, and onthe West coast they see more Vegas and

(04:25):
Phoenix, and then Hawaii. Itwas kind of surprising Hawaii's not number one
if Aruba's number one, but Hawaiiis a fairly new route. All of
the islands are fairly new to Southwest. And then he also explained that they
do see a difference in their customerbase. On the East coast it is
leisure travelers. On the West coastit is business travelers, and a lot
of that is you know, LAto San Francisco, LA, to Seattle,

(04:46):
LA to Denver, so that theysee a lot more business travelers on
the West coast leisure travelers on theEast coast. Have they implemented and or
do they have any plans to stoppeople freaking out mid flight trying to open
doors fighting flight attendants? Did theydid they figure out like, like do
they have like electric chairs now thatthey can hit a button for that one

(05:06):
yet No, not yet that Ijust know every time I read about like
somebody freaking out mid flight, Ifeel like it's almost exclusively Southwest, it's
just yeah or spirits one of thetwo. It's the low price. They
have a uh yeah, they havea low like plantel like myself. People

(05:26):
have called you know, I mean, I've heard it called actually yeah,
and I mean this does kind ofget rid of the low fair carrier.
We don't know what they're going todo on their airfares, but they're becoming
a regular airline now with premium seating. Yeah. The only thing is is
the bags. Hopefully they'll keep thosefree, but with assigned seating as well,

(05:47):
that they're really no longer a lowfair carrier separate from another airline that's
out there. When will we beable to begin picking our seats? Is
there any kind of a number onthat we're looking at early twenty twenty five,
because first they got in it maygets slowed down. They got to
do all the implementing of it andchange out those eight hundred planes, and
as they get new ones, thosewill come in. So, by the

(06:09):
way they did talk about today,a lot of people have thought this is
getting kind of nerdy on the planeside, but the if you fly southwest
a lot, you're typically on aseven thirty seven, seven hundred, eight
hundred or the max aircraft. Andthere was some thinking because the seven hundreds
are getting a little long in thetooth these days, they're getting old,
that that they would get rid ofthem, and he said, no,
that they're going to be flying themfor a very long time to come,

(06:31):
so they've got to retrofit those aswell. So some of the old planes
are going to get retro fitted.Yeah, the and by retrofitted, you
mean they're going to be putting thelarger like more legrooms, so at the
beginning, yeah, so they'll beactual first class as we Yeah, so
it won't be actual first class.But the interesting thing too is he said,
instead of buying new seats for theretrofitted planes, they're going to use

(06:53):
what they've already got. They don'tknow if they're going to recover them or
just leave them as is and thenjust spread them out a little bit pop
in the front because they don't wantto buy new Ricaro as the company new
Recaro seats, so they've got awhole new the new interiors are gonna look
totally different. It's a totally differentcolor scheme. It's got grays in it
and different blues. Cool. Peoplehave been angry about that as well,

(07:15):
but that they won't do that tosome of their oldest planes, will just
kind of spread out the seats.Alex Stone, ABC News, Alex,
thank you very much. You seehim, man. I can't tell you
how excited I am about this.I'm serious. But you fly a lot
them. Yeah. But but theother thing is if their flights go to

(07:38):
and the reason I don't fly alot of the other carriers is they don't
have any attractive priced flights to mostof the destinations that I And let's let's
face it, it's either for me, it's either like Jacksonville, Orlando,
or Las Vegas, and you knowit's gonna be Cabo Mexico here. But

(08:00):
we're flying American airlines for that.And I've never even flown American literally my
entire life, never flown in America. Flowing delta for a little while and
then we can go back to AmericaWest, which is that's what I used
to fly a million years ago.I loved America West and everything that they
brought to the whole situation, butthe whole Southwest thing. That was literally

(08:26):
my biggest concern was, man,you have to jockey for position. I've
literally seen people start arguing and Ithought, oh my god, these people
are going to start fighting right inline as they're because what happens is it's
like you have on your boarding pass, for instance, like a fifty one,
right, So you walk up intothe section that's a fifty through a

(08:48):
fifty five, and you go,what number are you? And someone goes
a fifty four and you're a fiftyone. You should be ahead of them.
So you're like, okay, I'mahead of you. And then they
go, ah, this is closeenough. What's the difference and you go,
no, I paid an early bird. And guess what. By the
time you're getting that's three more peoplein front of you who might take a

(09:09):
really good seat that you really want. And I've heard people almost come to
fisticuffs, and I'm sure there's beenplenty of fights right there in the airports.
I watched a guy call a womanthe B word, like start yelling
at her and be like stop beinga stupid bee, you know, like
he's and I'm like, oh myGod, these people are going to start

(09:30):
fighting, and it was really uncomfortable, like to be a part of all
that. Well, I don't flyvery often, if I mean, yeah,
I don't, but a lot ofpeople that do. But yes,
I do know that there's a reasonthat the people I know who fly,
they almost exclusively are Delta Diamond andClub members. And that's because they don't

(09:54):
get to they don't put up withany of that. They Now, these
people can afford that because that's that'sa pretty penny. Yeah, round trip.
Most of their most of their stuffround trip, unless they're using miles
like Bonus whatever. Round trip.I mean a flight could be one thousand
bucks to Las Vegas round trip,whereas that literally you can pick up a

(10:15):
three sixty three seventy flight on Southwest. Think about that, it's literally sixty
six percent cheaper. And there area lot of direct flights. Delta doesn't
even have direct flight. But see, like when you're a Diamond Rewards member,
you're basically sitting in first class,you're but you got there by paying
a lot of money for your fare. Yeah you did. But see like

(10:37):
my buddy doesn't have to Amazon paidmy buddy is that's different. Yeah he
uh yeah, my best friend Dustin, he travels the world for Amazon.
He's an executive with them, andhe gets to keep those miles and he
gets to keep all the miles.He has over one point six million miles.
That's crazy, man. He hasnot paid for a vacation in flight.

(10:58):
Yeah yeah, light for vacation intwelve years. See, that's amazing
right there. He's in a uniquesituation. Most of America clearly is in
that sense. Also, he canstay any Hilton he wants in the world
and Amazon will pay for it.Doesn't matter. He gets Hilton and he
gets to get reward. Do theycount the lifestyle he's he's flying for free

(11:22):
on Delta, I gotcha. Andhe's staying for free at Hilton. Do
they count that as part of hissalary, because that could be that could
be valued. It's just it's justconsidered a perk bonus. That is that's
an amazing purpose. Well, my, my, my, Dustin is smart
and he's he's set for life.He is well above seven figures at this
point. Good for him. Well, I mean he cracked a seven figure

(11:46):
mark. I'll put it that way. I don't think he's up to eight.
But it's amazing, it is.I'm so proud of him. We
come from nothing. We he grewup next to a trailer park and pickwell,
good for his stories of me.But it's like this guy was so
smart. You know what he dideight years ago or nine years ago when

(12:09):
they gave him this new role ofwhat they asked him if he wanted basically
like a fifty or sixty or seventyor eighty thousand dollars a year salary increase,
like basically he was going to bemaking nice he said, no,
I'll take stock option he and that'show he's that's how he's where he is,
except quadruple septupled his stop. Sobasically that equivalent of like whatever he

(12:35):
was going to make two hundred andsome, he's like, the stock alone
is like two million. Now clearlyhe doesn't subscribe to Bird in the Hand
is two in the books, No, because that's pretty amazing and good for
him, Good for him, that'sgood guy. Let mean, I know
because whenever we see each other,my family, we don't ever pay for

(12:56):
anything. And he takes us tovery nice place that's awesome and traveling and weathered