Southwest Airlines makes pricey baggage, seating changes | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

To put things in pro wrestling terms, Southwest Airlines has completed its hell turn. Like John Cena delivering a low blue to Cody Rhodes, the airline has proverbially, punched all of its customers below the belt.

And, much like Cena, the perennial, good guy finally deciding to become a villain, Southwest has embraced being the bad guy.

A company that once prided itself on putting customers first has been very vocal about putting the bottom line first.

You may hear some Southwest Airlines (LUV) executives trying to pretend that this is not a massive anti-consumer change, but those are empty words.

The airline has decided that it will no longer offer clear pricing with everything included, or nearly everything. It will also no longer be the Democratic airline where everyone can pick their seat.

Instead, Southwest will be no different than United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, at any of the discount carriers that charge for everything. And, at least in the case of the discount carriers they are being very clear with what they offer.

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Spirit and Frontier airlines are very upfront about their à la cart model and their overall business strategy. Yes, you pay for everything but some customers opt to not pay for a seat assignment or to board the plane last in order to save money.

Southwest Airlines want you to think it’s still a customer first airline when it’s clearly a dollars first airline..

Southwest Airlines will not charge for checked bags.

Image source&colon; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Southwest Airlines raises prices, cuts elsewhere

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan spoke at the 41st Bernstein Annual Strategic Decisions Conference and he sounded like someone happy he no longer has to pretend to care about consumers.

“In all of the changes that we are driving at Southwest Airlines. We have a huge plan of initiatives on the revenue and the cost side. Some of those we announced last fall, some of those we announced this March. If you’re watching, we put in a huge slug of those yesterday,” he shared during his “fireside chat.”

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He laid out many of the new ways the airline plans to make money off its customers.

“So we added a basic economy fare. If you go on the website, on the app, you see that today we changed some of our fare families. We began charging for bags. Obviously, if you’re — if you have status, if you — all you have to do is have our credit card, you still have a free bag and we changed some of our flight credit expiration,” he added.

More Southwest Airlines charges are coming soon

Why kick your opponent (or in this case your customer) in the groin once, when doing it over and over does so much more damage. Jordan shared many of the other ways Southwest plans to charge more

“And then the remainder, a lot of those come in very quickly. We’ll be announcing soon the date that we began selling assigned seating and extra leg room that will come in on the sell side in the third quarter of this year for operation in the first quarter of 2026.,” he shared.

Southwest previously did not charge for seats and used a pick-your-own-seat-as-you board model. Only exit row seats had more legroom, and people did not have to pay more to sit in those.

Jordan was proud of his team for both the price increases and for some things that deserve to be celebrated.

“So the real story there is, I’m just really proud of the team and the execution of the initiatives. Again, a lot is already in place. A lot went in yesterday. I’m very proud of our team in the execution of the operation,” he said. “”We’re number one or right at number one in on-time performance, lowest canceled flights, lowest long delays. We’re just crushing it on the operations front, very, very proud of folks. And we are showing very, very strong cost discipline. “