Southwest Airlines lost $231 million in Q1 2024 and the pressure has been steadily increasing for the one-time toast of Wall Street to make significant changes for more revenue.
Southwest flights have started to appear on online search engines like Google Flights and Kayak and, as the airline tries to squeeze out more incremental revenue, they’ve announced that assigned seats, premium class and red-eye flights are on the way.
Those changes created some very mixed responses from Southwest loyalists, many of whom had grown comfortable with the carrier’s long-held open-seating model and felt like the space that separated Southwest from any other domestic carrier was growing smaller by the minute.
Now, according to a survey that was sent to some Southwest customers, it seems like airline is considering making changes to possibly its most sacrosanct policy: two free checked bags for all customers.
What’s happened
- Southwest has sent surveys out to customers to feel out the response to it making changes to its checked bag policy. Possible changes include:
- Wanna Get Away fares going to one free checked bag, with the second bag costing $35
- Credit cardholders would still get two free bags for themselves and one companion.
- The survey also asked about different fare class combinations with lowered costs but less or no free checked bags.
Quick Thoughts
Airlines send these sorts of surveys out all the time, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that the changes that they ask about will come to fruition. They sometimes don’t.
That said, similar surveys preceded Southwest’s recent changes to their seating policy and, given the current revenue climate at the company, I’d be surprised if the two free bags policy isn’t eventually altered in some way.
Based on the survey, it sounds like the most likely scenario is that Wanna Get Away fares will lose one free bag, but that would be mitigated by being a Southwest cardholder. That effectively kills two birds with one stone: allowing for at least some increase in incremental baggage fee revenue and at the same time giving more perceived value for credit cardholders. In the grand scheme of things, it seems like a fairly reasonable change…but I’m not a loyal Southwest customer, either.
We’d love to hear from anyone else who got this survey and what folks would think about the implied change to Wanna Get Away fares.
(h/t: Frequent Miler Insider James S.)
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