ursine1

Big front seats on Southwest will never happen, IMHO. Assigned seating? Maybe.

I expect any changes that come from the new system will be primarily for WN's benefit, and likely at the customer's expense.

smmrfld

What's most impressive is how it converted itself from an A321 to a B752 at FLL!

Zorak

Well, y'know, miracle flights and all

MrMan

Note also my keeping it simple it greatly reduces labor costs. Compare WN to AA for example where WN has an agent working multiple flights, compared to AA who needs multiple agents for one flight dealing with last minute seating changes and upgrades

LegalTender

Not in my experience. One agent works multiple flights at AA (and others). Upgrades don't involve a PA call to the counter.

rasheed

I also was surprised how many examples of limitations were provided. I think AA (particular LUS in the 'home Southwest' PHX-based area) does a very aggressive planning with daily flight variability based on demand scheduling.

Also, Southwest heavily advertises on kayak when one of its routes matches a search, so I don't see why fare comparison would be a problem at some point soon.

Rasheed

rsteinmetz70112

Yes that did and if you booked an Airtran Flight through Southwest you got a random assigned seat. But if you booked through Airtran you could pick your seat at checlin. At least thats hiow I remember it. I was Airtran Elite so I fgot to pick any seat on the plane except Busniess, but I got that at the gate most of the time.

sdsearch

But legacy carriers don't fly a zillion different versions of the same plane. They are more likely to fly one version of one plane, another version of another plane, etc. (For example, AA only flies 738s, not any other member of the 737 family.)

Southwest's point-to-point extreme makes it less predictable which version of the 737 you will get on a particular flight. Which makes assigned seating difficult if the seat map is different for every version of the 737 Southwest flies.

While legacy airlines may do a bit of point to point, they don't do it to the degree where they mess up which kind of plane is on a given route (and thus make assigned seating a total mess to clear up at the gate). Plane changes only happen in rare cases.

But until Southwest gets the consistency to be able to tell you exactly which "flavor" of 737 you'll be flying in at booking time, and have that overwhelmingly turn out to be true by the time you board, Southwest will have trouble doing assigned seats (at least without blocking out sizeable parts of the plane) because of the different seating maps on the different "flavors" of the 737.

That consistency is much easier if the same planes fly a limited number of routes all the time, rather than each plane "randomly" getting circulated all around the country.

Southwest's policy of flying only 737s, but flying almost all "flavors" of the 737 semi-interchangeably, is very much tied to their open seating policy. With open seating, all that matters is the number of seats (and little differences in that can be soaked up by last minute changes by some passengers not showing up and other passengers standing by.

joshua362

I used to book SW "business select" and got to choose one of those sweet Business Class seats and collect the SW points. It was sweet while it lasted. That was certainly an example of a system limitation workaround or a bridge.

Despite the name calling above, I still contend WN could do things to mitigate "the IT limitations" it has. Data is data, might take a big effort to do so but its possible. I had a CIO like this from 2004-2010 where budgets, org chart power, headcount & the latest equipment meant much more then getting it done!

Zorak

Official Delta B737-800/900 Mods Thread

The Official 757-200 Interior Mod Tracking Thread

sdsearch

Sorry, I meant different seating configurations. (That should have been obvious from the context, no?)

How many of those have different seating configurations because the lighting was changed or the WiFi was changed?

It's only differences in seating configurations that matters to how easy it is for the system to know at booking time exactly how what assignable seats there will be on the airplane you fly when you fly it.

It's exit rows I would want to reserve on Southwest planes, if Southwest had assigned seating with existing planes. The exit rows are differently configured on different Southwest planes. And I see no way at present to know which of those configurations my plane will have at the time I book it. The only reason it doesn't matter at present is because Southwest has open seating instead of assigned seating.

Zorak

The 757 wiki lists the F/Comfort+/Economy breakdowns. For the DL 737 variants I'munsure off the top of my head so you may have a point, but you can check the Delta online seat maps or seatguru as well as I can

https://www.delta.com/content/www/en.../Aircraft.html

There are definitely some differences in where the exit row is and whether it's 2 or 3 for example.

diver858

I am a big fan of the AA SAN-MIA redeye for quick leisure trips to the Caribbean, Riveria Maya - gets me to my resort destination in time for lunch, enjoy the first day of my vacation.

diver858

Redeyes should allow WN to increase utilization of its fleet, add more time between flights to improve schedule performance.

dlaue

Just wanted to rub it in.

I posted this on July 2, in response to the banner announcement that Southwest was going to upgrade its IT systems and thereby increase its profits by $1/2 billion.