I just don't care about the PR ramifications for the company, the employees, and its stockholders. I will never, ever be a stockholder of any airline no matter how good the airline is. Airlines are so terrible of a business that they need the credit card business and the upper part of the K-shaped economy to be decently profitable. They had no business doing shareholder buybacks when the business still needed a lot of work. I'm in the minority that hated rampant preboard abuse. There are a lot of airline bad CEOs including the ones at Southwest. This change to end open seating was a long time coming and should have happened years ago.

I am ALP and 2026 will be my last year of earning the Companion Pass organically.

I've moved half my business to Frontier due to cost. Southwest is a business trying to maximize the yield per flight / RASM.

I'll deal with that. I'll fly Frontier, I'll either renegotiate my work-from-home arrangement, or I'll retire. But I'm not paying $140 for a one hour flight. Never have, never will. I've gone with the Frontier solution.

The other half of my business is still with Southwest because the value is still there when the fares are reasonable. The distance traveled by car to the airport and the schedule matter a lot to me too so I don't necessarily want $15 fares.

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Although the app will no longer let you change seats when it's too close to boarding time, the gate agent can still make the seat changes. I'd take one last look at the seating chart as a fresh purchaser before boarding. Most of the time I'm trying to get an empty row of 3 seats so I can sleep or relax. I would think an 80 flight ALP passenger would know this.