Could first class and long distance flights and airport rooms be the following in Southwest Airlines? After all changes in the long -standing business model of the airline in recent months, including bags of the bags, the assigned seats and Shake-ups of the loyalty programThe senior executives of the company apparently do not rule out anything.
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“We do not stop here,” said Southwest’s CEO, Bob Jordan, speaking on Thursday at an industry conference in New York.
For next year, said Jordan, Southwest plans to present his next round of long -term plans: the next chapter, if he wishes, in the evolution that until now he has marked the beginning of the assigned seats, $ 35 bags And, for the first time in the airline, the basic economy.
What else could be on the horizon?
“There is no revelation today,” Jordan warned. But he also raised some “hypothetical” examples of what the airline could consider.
“For many of our people who love southwest, we cannot do things, we cannot provide products, which you want. As a first class. We cannot take it to long -distance international destinations. If a room is important for you, we do not have a room,” Jordan said while we talk to the Bernstein strategic decisions conference.
“I am not predicting any of those things,” he reiterated by making it clear that “we will continue to chase the consumer.”
And Jordan said that the demand for the consumer of a lounge in some cities in the Southwest key is “super tall.”
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He also acknowledged that rethinking Southwest’s international strategy (and pushing beyond his short distance flights to places like Mexico and the Caribbean), “might require that you think about a different plane.” The carrier currently has a completely narrow Boeing Boeing Fleet.
“What I promise,” said Jordan, “… is that we will never miss a strategy of five years’.
Evolving, but less and less different
Again, none of this is officially “on the table”, so to speak.
But of say goodbye to your distinctive rates they want to escape (Do you remember those commercials?) It is its unique shipping process again in its kind and Release of Red Eye Flights Earlier this year, the last months have shown a southwest, which cut their teeth different, such as an airline that is not afraid of change.
Financial pressures have a lot to do with that.
Following the coronavirus pandemic, they are aircraft carriers such as Delta Air Lines and United Airlines that have shot the highest profits of the United States airline industry, driven by its robust international networks, Premium seat and lucrative credit card portfolios.
Meanwhile, Southwest has not maintained its historically high margins, a driving force behind the shift that the airline has passed in recent months.
“The old model did not work and now we have turned,” said Southwest Operations Director Andrew Watterson, acknowledged the company’s profit call last month.
Compeating with Premium Airlines
However, there is a reality marked in the Southwest pivot: yes, it will soon have more premium options in its ranks Extralegroom. Yes, it will offer “updates” to the members of A-List Elite and certain Rapid Rewards credit card holders.
But even when Southwest coincides with Delta, United, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines in loading additional customer rates for bags (and eventually seats, in some rates), he still will not have the first class seats and those carriers they offer come out. Even Frontier Airlines is Add premium seats in good faithAnd Jetblue has announced Halls and a National Product of First Class To complement your long -distance mint suites.
That contrast, as Brian Sumers of the Airline Observer He wrote in MarchIt could be said that it puts its southwest at a disadvantage, since it begins to look more like its competitors in other areas.
And it is a contrast that I raised Tony Roach, executive vice president of customers and brands, during a recent interview only a few weeks ago.
“There is nothing to announce about rooms or first class,” Roach warned then, with a tone similar to what Jordan offered during his comments this week.
“But it can almost assume that, if this is an offer of products that our customers finally want and demand Southwest Airlines, we have shown that we have to continue evolving, satisfy more of those needs,” he added. “We continue to look at the long term, the future of the southwest, which, again, we continue to offer more things that will give people more reasons to choose the southwest.”
Planning for the future
If customers would continue to choose a very different aspect was the Subject of much speculation This spring.
Until now, so well, the executives said last month, noting that the carrier had not thrown the passengers into the competitors.
“After announcing these changes, we did not see evidence of Bookaway,” Jordan told analysts in April.
But maintaining that impulse, suggested this week, may require Southwest to continue evolving.
It is conceivable that Quest can take the airline to more characteristics, and flights, than their competitors (and their clients) have come in recent years.
“Because we cannot offer certain products and take you to certain destinations, even to the customers who love southwest, we force you to fly over another person. And then we force you to take the cobrand of another person [credit] Card, “Jordan said Thursday, committing to” study “that gap in the coming months.
“I would think about that,” he added, “… as a 2026 question.”
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