Southwest Airlines makes big change to its boarding process
First came assigned seats. Then checked bag fees. Up next: a move to traditional boarding groups.
Southwest Airlines is reversing course on yet another key promise it made in the not-so-distant past.
For months, the airline had made clear its unique boarding process — single-file lines, numbered posts and such — would remain mostly intact even as it shifted away from open seating. But this week, a top executive at the Dallas-based carrier confirmed the airline is now planning to go in an entirely different direction.
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“As it stands today we are going to do away with the lining up,” Southwest executive vice president operations Justin Jones said, speaking this week on the Airlines Confidential podcast.
The changes will take effect once Southwest begins its new assigned seating model, planned for early 2026.
At that point, Jones said, the carrier will ditch its one-of-a-kind boarding process in favor of one that will largely resemble the procedures used by its competitors — and spell the end of the silver stanchions that line its gates.
“We decided to do away with those at assigned seating,” Jones said this week. “It allows us to break the groups up into smaller groups and have that more ordinal boarding towards the back half of the boarding process.”
More than ‘tweaks’ previously planned
To be clear, Southwest’s existing boarding process required at least some changes, at a minimum. After all, the current setup is tailored to its open seating model that’s on the outs: customers get an individual boarding position — a de facto spot in line — and then line up along the silver posts before proceeding to the gate agent and onto the jet bridge.
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As recently as January, Southwest executives had claimed the carrier would keep the essence of that process even as it moved to assigned seating, save for a few necessary “tweaks.”
“It’ll feel very familiar to Southwest customers, with boarding positions, lining up sequentially, using the stanchions,” Southwest executive vice president Ryan Green said, speaking to me in Washington on Jan. 15.
“The customer is going to get a boarding position and then they’ll also get a seat assignment,” Green added. “Our customers really appreciate the calmness at the gate of the lining up.”
A series of 180-degree pivots
But if there’s been one theme consistent in Southwest’s changes of recent weeks, it’s that whatever executives said last year — or even a couple of months ago – may not ring true today.
The last month has seen the airline end its hallmark two free checked bags policy and slash earnings rates for Rapid Rewards points on lower-level fares — both moves the airline, last fall, explicitly said it wouldn’t make despite wholesale changes at the company.
Recent weeks also brought the first employee layoffs in Southwest history, all as the carrier faces continued pressure from activist investor group Elliott Investment Management.
Green himself, who spoke of maintaining that “familiar” boarding process earlier this year, will resign his post effective April 1, according to a filing last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
As it relates to the evolved thinking on Southwest’s boarding process, Jones acknowledged that the airline went “back and forth” on the decision. But he specifically cited the airline’s hope to make its boarding process more consistent with those seen at other airlines, speaking on the podcast this week.
“The reason is just ultimately, just decided for consistency of our product,” he said. “Not only for Southwest, but also what you might experience on other airlines, it was just easy to kind of go to a little bit more of an industry-standard boarding process.”
What’s next?
It seems a likely bet Southwest will aim to capitalize on boarding groups as part of its Rapid Rewards loyalty program and suite of cobranded credit cards, as other airlines do today. On other airlines, nicer seats, elite status and credit card membership often comes with earlier boarding access.
And Southwest, increasingly, is an airline that looks like its peers, with its bag fees set to take effect May 28, and its assigned seating switchover planned for the first three months of 2026.
Still, after yet another 180-degree shift on a key customer-facing policy, Southwest loyalists are, at this point, right to ask: what else could be on the horizon?
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