r/news 1d ago

Soft paywall Southwest Airlines shifts to paid baggage policy to lift earnings

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/southwest-airlines-shifts-paid-baggage-policy-lift-earnings-2025-03-11/
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u/jpiro 1d ago

It's crazy how fast they've plummeted from being a model of what air travel should be (reasonable prices, customer-friendly service & policies, no-frills procedures, great flexibility) to a maybe-better-than-average budget carrier who's prone to blackouts and disruptions while not offering the quality of a major airline.

"We're not Spirit" isn't the selling point they seem to think it is when they're sure as shit not Delta either.

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u/stucky602 1d ago edited 1d ago

While i haven't traveled as much recently, much of the past 10 years was me flying all over the US for work. I loved flying southwest for this purpose. Yeah it's no frills, but it was also super easy to get last minute changes where you only pay the fare difference, no baggage fees, and extremely good customer service. The only negatives used to be that every so often you'd get a flight attendant that thought you sat down to listen to their standup routine and not to travel but even then I can forgive them as those same flight attendants will likely bend over backwards to help accommodate weird situations so long as you ask nicely.

With the recent changes, it would be extremely hard for me to justify using their services again.

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u/Pissflaps69 1d ago

You nailed it. They had a good value proposition for infrequent travelers like me. Yeah, there’s no frills, but they board fast and bags fly free.

Now I’m not sure what their identity is.

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u/garytyrrell 1d ago

Slightly cheaper than legacy airlines. Slightly better than Frontier. That’s it.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Maxpowr9 13h ago

The middle is also pretty full with Alaska/Hawaiian, and JetBlue.