Southwest’s extra-legroom seats will begin appearing on some planes next year

If you’re a frequent flier of Southwest Airlines, you may start to notice some big changes at the airline sooner than you expected.

Late last month, executives at the Dallas-based airline launched a major commercial overhaul, including more details about the airline’s plans. abandoned its half-century-old open seating policy in favor of seats with extra legroom and specified legroom for the first time.

EQUAL TPG reported last weekThese designated seats will go on sale at the end of 2025 for flights departing in the first half of 2026.

However, you won’t have to wait until 2026 to see seats with extra legroom appearing on some planes. And long before the airline’s most seismic changes are made, Southwest is planning to change the way it prices some of its current additional boarding products.

Seats with more legroom will appear next year

Southwest won’t start selling assigned seats — or seats with extra legroom — until late next year. However, planes with more spacious seats will begin rolling out quietly, appearing on some Southwest flights next year.

Between now and the end of 2025, the airline has a huge commitment: It must retrofit its entire fleet of about 800 jets with new seating configurations. It will start with the larger Boeing 737-800 and 737 MAX 8 jets and then move to the 737-700s.

Executives said Southwest hopes to win Federal Aviation Administration approval for the new cabin configuration early next year; The airline is working to secure the necessary permissions.

“We expect the engineering work to be complete and certified so we can start retrofitting,” Ryan Green, executive vice president of commercial transformation, told investors last week. for its larger aircraft in the first quarter of 2025.”

Once started, Southwest hopes to retrofit 50 to 100 planes a month, slowing the pace during the summer months so that fewer planes are grounded during peak travel periods.

Once the crew finishes reconfiguring the aircraft, it will not come to rest until assigned seating begins. Instead, it will rejoin the fleet and return to Southwest’s flight schedule. After all, planes don’t help airlines make money when they go out of business.

That means some lucky passengers will get a peek at Southwest’s extra legroom seats before the airline’s open-seating era technically ends.

Big changes: Below are 20 Southwest Airlines routes that will have red-eye flights

Passengers may be surprised

Until Southwest’s assigned seating setup fully launches in early 2026, there likely won’t be an easy way to tell if your Southwest plane has been updated to a seat with extra legroom or not.

However, you may get a feeling of ambivalence at the gate: Southwest says TPG gate agents can, In some cases, inform customers about more extensive services just before departure.

The seats, which Southwest says will take up about a third of the cabin space (nearly 40% on some jets), will likely be in high demand on those flights in the final months of seat openings.

In fact, the airline expects these seats to drive renewed interest in its existing EarlyBird and Upgrade Boarding products; Those products help passengers secure an earlier seat in the boarding queue and, by extension, an earlier seat choice in the current first-come, first-served seating model.

“Certainly, when you have a large fleet and you have a flight to Hawaii that has been retrofitted, and you have more legroom on that airplane… the need for a Boarding Upgrade at the gate would have to go up,” Green said, giving an example.

Flexible pricing for current boarding products

To that end, Southwest executives have teased another impending change to its current add-on service. “We will also dynamically price these ancillary equipment,” Green said. That’s not what we’re doing today with EarlyBird or Boarding Upgrade,” Green said, noting those changes will take effect sometime in late 2024 or early 2025.

What is dynamic pricing?

Dynamic pricing essentially means that the pricing structure is flexible and can fluctuate up or down based on a variety of factors determined by the algorithm. Supply and demand are chief among those factors. It’s a pricing model that’s increasingly popular across the industry.

Notably, more and more airlines are now dynamically pricing award flights rather than using award charts, which once made point and mile redemptions more predictable.

For example, it is conceivable that the airline could find customers willing to pay a premium to upgrade to a longer flight to Hawaii in the hope of getting one of the more spacious seats. .

However, it’s unclear how such a dynamic pricing model might ultimately affect the cost of Southwest’s current add-on services before the airline moves to assigned seating. Executives seem confident that the products will make more money when jets equipped with extra legroom begin operating next year.

“It’s going to take us a while to train the model on that, but I think there will probably be some improvement in ancillary revenue from the current boarding product when we’re done,” Green said. there”.

It’s worth noting that Southwest has used a fairly flexible pricing model for EarlyBird and Upgraded Boarding. Earlier this year, it increased top-level fees on both amid a wave of airlines increasing ancillary fees.

EarlyBird – which automatically holds passengers in line 36 hours before departure – costs between $15 and $99 one-way per passenger.

Upgraded boarding – which guarantees passengers an A1-15 boarding spot – costs between $30 and $149 per segment, per traveler.

Again, all of this could be temporary: EarlyBird and Boarding Upgrade are unique to Southwest’s open seating concept, and they could be adjusted (or disappear entirely) when Southwest switched to assigned seating.

Now, Southwest customers will have a lot of changes to consider in the coming year.

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