Southwest Airlines’ decision to do away with unreserved seating attracted lots of media coverage. Much of it referred to the carrier, which has a long and proud history at Chicago’s Midway Airport, as a low-cost airline,
That might be the case if you are looking at potential profitability or some other measure important to shareholders. But from a customer perspective, that has not been true for a very long time.
For proof, all you have to do is compare prices for Midway’s dominant airline with the major carriers serving O’Hare. We do it often, and typically the prices are the same. Strikingly often, in fact, Southwest is the most expensive. True, Southwest does not charge extra for bags and has a couple of bespoke promotions, but even low-level status with its rivals, or merely a branded credit card, gets you much the same deal. By removing its open-seating policy, its last remaining meaningful distinction, Southwest finally is admitting that it is has become just like American, United and Delta.
Last week’s announcement, of course, is all about profit. Airlines make billions of dollars by charging flyers for so-called premium seats, which they used to get for free. By assigning seats of various levels of desirability, Southwest can fully engage in one of the most unpleasant of modern-day marketing tricks: disguising the true cost of a flight in reasonable comfort. By “unbundling,” so to speak, airlines also make it harder to accurately compare prices. They like that; we don’t.
Back in the day, we were big fans of Herb Kelleher’s Southwest way: low fares, plastic boarding cards, faster loading and connections, rapid treks out to the runway, avoidance of the O’Hare traffic. All you had to do was get to the airport and check in first, and you could get access to the best seats, however much you had paid. Alas, those egalitarian days are over. You can no longer barter your time for privilege. Now it all goes to those who generate the highest revenue.
Southwest was, in large part, responding to an activist shareholder, and it has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to do as well for them as it can. We have no argument there. It’s also true that the airlines had already violated its Kelleher-induced prior purity by selling off its prime boarding spots through its “Business Select” fares, or whatever. Also, some people have tried to game the system by arriving in a wheelchair and leaving under their own steam, a phenomenon known as the “Jetway Jesus” effect, or engaging in elaborate techniques to hold seats for companions, everything from manspreading to avoidance of eye contact to acting as temporarily toxic as possible. We’ve seen it all.
But we’d also point out that that the carrier has been handed a virtual monopoly at lower-cost Chicago Midway and that it really should not be around $500 for the short summer round-trip hop to Detroit, to use one of today’s example, even with a week’s notice. Europeans going equivalent distances usually pay a lot less. And trips from frigid Chicago to Florida during school winter vacations should not be reserved for the families of hedge fund mavens.
So by all means, assign seats, Southwest, and make your extra buck. But remember your customers. And we’ll miss the days of $49, grabbing the first seat we can find and scooting off fast with a very fun crew.
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