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Southwest Airlines - Some Changes Don't Change Things

Yesterday, I flew Southwest from New York to the Midwest.  Southwest Airlines is currently under a lot of scrutiny for making changes that aligns their operations and experiences to other airlines - seat selection and charging for bags.

As an observation, it has been a while since Southwest has had low fare airlines.  It seems like on similar routes, they are almost always more expensive that American Airlines or United Airlines.  It is worth noting that the difference is often greater than the price of checking two bags.  However, the miles redemption is almost always lower on Southwest than other airlines.  And if you have a Companion Pass*, then it will definitely be cheaper than other airlines for two tickets.  This is my observation from looking at tickets over the past 3 years - I have not done research or seen statistics to support or counter this observation.

One of the things which Southwest is undeniably better at is turning planes around at airports.  There time between landing and taking-off is significantly faster.  There are a few reasons behind this:

1- With free bags, the boarding process is much quicker because people check bags.  Fewer bags in a limited space results in fewer people having to check their bags while boarding and/or stalling the boarding process to look for places to store them.  It is interesting to see how this will play out now that bags require payment.

2- They start cleaning the plane before the plane has landed.  As the crew does their final landing preparation, they are asking and calling out people that seem to have trash around them or in the seat pocket.  They are vigilant and have hawk eyes to find the trash and collect it.  Less trash, less time to clean the plane on the ground.

3- Once they land, they start cleaning the plane as soon as people start to disembark.  As row 1 empties, the flight attendants immediately begin to clean the row.  And they follow the emptied rows.  Thus, they have expanded the cleaning window to start much earlier than once all passengers have exited.

The last two items should remain even with the recent changes, so Southwest will likely continue to turn around planes quicker than the industry.  However, their lead in this metric may decrease. 

* The Companion Pass basically allows a named companion to fly free with you, regardless of the fare class purchased.  If there is a seat available on the plane, the companion flies with you.  And it is transacted at the time of ticket purchase.

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