Southwest Airlines signaled the end of an era today with the announcement that it will begin charging passengers to check bags. The signature policy of fee-less checked bags has been in place for decades, setting the low-fare airline apart from rivals.
Going to be interesting to see how this plays out. These changes will eliminate what is still unique about Southwest and make them just like any other airline.
Seen from afar it seems this is done by management who lack āfeelā for the spirit of the business. Itās much easier to shatter sympathy for a business than to to (re)gain it. From a (cabin) crew and speed perspective it would make much more sense to charge for hand luggage and keep checked luggage free. Everyone trying to cram everything into overhead bins not designed for the amount of hand luggage brought by a lot more passengers than the plane was initially intended for makes for a miserable travelling experience and longer boarding and de-boarding times.
All ticket pricing should be based on weight, both human and what ever else you want to bring with you. It is the only fair way to do it. All flying costs are essentially based on weight. Ticket pricing should reflect the same.
Spot on Siegfried, not only from the cabin crew perspective but also from the passenger perspective. But itās become a moot point for me. Iāve been voting with my wheels for the past 5 years.
Will indeed be interesting to see what happens. It is absolutely now āJust Another Airlineā. And their other conditions and fees have also complicated the fare selection to take the previous comfort out of a ticket purchase. SWA is all Iāve flown for years. Will now begin to do bargain shopping for fares.
āWe have tremendous opportunity to meet current and future customer needs, attract new customer segments we donāt compete for today, and return to the levels of profitability that both we and our shareholders expect.ā
Itās not clear to me how beginning to charge for checked baggage will help SWA āattract new customer segmentsā. Have people been avoiding SWA because they donāt have to pay to check their luggage? Seems obvious to me the only reason is to improve corporate/shareholder profit, at the potential risk of losing previously faithful customers ā itās the American way.
Thatās exactly what we need, the shotgun to kill the fly. Nothing like implementing a complicated and nitpicky detail to the reservations process. If we didnāt need it now, we donāt need it later.
I think the airlines havenāt implemented that in 100 years of air travel because it is a ridiculous idea.
Fortunately, the marketing is really easy to fix: āBags Fly Fee!ā
Private equity firms, leveraged buy-outs, hostile takeovers, āactiveā investors pushing for short-term profits over long term gainsā¦Capitalism is an inherently destructive system. Not saying there is anything better out there, but a lot of good companies and good people will inevitably get hurt in the process.
Really sad to see a good and successful business model get trashed by investor interference. The things that made Southwest unique were valued by loyal customers who appreciated quicker boarding, simpler ticket pricing and easy-to-understand fare structure. Now theyāre about to be another Spirit or Frontier except with blue-painted airplanes. Not what the market neededā¦
SWA competition put up a combined 5.5 billion in revenue last year on luggage charges alone. Itās about time SWA stopped leaving that money on the table.
Sure, SWA may be becoming just another option, but an option nonetheless and likely still filling planes on its routes in the 1-3 years from now when the collective customer base forgets about this change altogether and still pays for the checked bag, giving SWA a much needed revenue boost.
Itās about time they make big changes to get the margins back into the double digits, and I think this will help drastically.
If charging extra for every little item that Southwest does not charge extra for now is such a good thing, how come the king of extra charges, Spirit airlines is going through bankruptcy with a distinct possibility of going belly up?
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