Southwest Airlines adds policy passengers complain about most | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

The current Southwest Airlines is basically that in name only. In the interest of improving its bottom line, the airline has abandoned all of the things that made it special.

Previously, when you flew on Southwest, the hallway to get on the plane was filled with posters naming all the things other airlines did that Southwest did not do.

That included charging for bags, adding various fees, and generally not charging the price that was actually on the ticket.

Southwest called this “transfarency,” and they were really proud of it. It was a cornerstone of their business, along with open seating and generally being a business that put passengers first.

This version of Southwest Airlines has the name, but it’s working very hard to shed everything that made the company special.

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It started with little nitpicky things like charging for Internet on each leg of a flight instead of my flight day. It will soon move to charging for seat assignments and the end of the airline’s beloved free checked bags policy.

A sideline of the end of free checks bags is forcing Southwest to do something that passengers hate, which is very common on its rival airlines.

Southwest Airlines has made some major changes.

Image source&colon; Tim Boyle/Getty Images

Southwest Airlines needs to turn its planes quickly

Since Southwest Airlines no longer lets customers check bags for free, more people try to bring a carry-on bag. That slows down the boarding process because people need to find overhead space for their bag and stow it away.

The airline, like all airlines, has a set amount of time for boarding its planes and going over that costs it money and risks delays. In addition, flight attendants do not get paid until the plane’s door closes.

Everyone on the ground wants the plane to take off on time, and the number one thing that can slow the process is when overhead space become tight. If that happens, passengers may have to move up or down the aisle to find a place to stow their bag.

Even worse, if the bins are full, the bag must be walked back to the jetway to be gate-checked.

To avoid that, Southwest has been doing something that passengers hate. The airline has been preemptively forcing passengers to gate-check their bags.

In many cases, this call gets made before the bins are actually full, leading to passengers having to check their bag, then boarding the plane, only to see open bin space.

Southwest is doing this on purpose

“I’ve never seen an airline – or almost any business, really – blow up their brand and do so voluntarily the way that Southwest has. This is just another way they’ve become customer-unfriendly, virtually overnight. And it’s an example of one way they used to offer a better experience than competitors, and now do not,” wrote View From the Wing’s Gary Leff.

Southwest, of course, does not see its changes as abandoning its brand identity (or at least they won’t admit it). The airline has remained focused on its bottom line, even if that has come at the expense of its relationship with its customers.

“Well last month we announced a plan to transform our revenue strategy, improve our cost performance, and deliver meaningfully improved financial results on an accelerated timeline. Regardless of the economic environment, we remain focused on executing our strategic plan, which is a unique opportunity to Southwest and on controlling what we can control. We are very encouraged by the results from the initiatives we implemented in the first quarter,” CEO Bob Jordan said during the airline’s first-quarter earnings call.

He also bragged about getting planes out quicker (which has contributed to the forced gate checks).

“We also seamlessly implemented our turn time initiative in more stations, and we now have removed five minutes of turn time from schedules in 19 stations while leading the industry in on-time performance. And importantly we executed on unit costs and our overall cost reduction plan,” he added.

The CEO also touted the many cost increases the airline has planned.

“Next month we will begin offering a basic economy product and new pair structure supporting increased buy-up. We’ll start charging check-bag fees and reduce the expiration of flight credits. We also remain on track to begin selling premium and assigned seating in the third quarter of this year for flights in the first quarter of 2026,” he shared.