Southwest Airlines Community

I have experienced the new boarding procedures and I have no problems with it once it gets in sync and your gate agents follow the established protocol. That being said, I am simply floored by your new pricing structure. In the past 48 hours, the company I work for (in Phoenix) has removed Southwest from its "preferred" list of airlines because the new pricing structure is unbelievable. As one of the travel coordinators for my company, I am perplexed as to the justification for the sudden sticker shock. Even for personal travel, your pricing has certainly excluded me. That ticket from Phoenix to Las Vegas that was running $118 (which included fees and taxes) two months ago is now $239 even if I book four months in advance. You are going to have to show me hard evidence that your costs have doubled in order to justify those increases. At $239, I can add another $80 and fly JetBlue to NYC. You have said you are trying to appeal to the business traveler. Did you run any of these changes in front of focus groups, because if you had, I doubt you would have instituted the pricing structure. I have been coordinating travel on the corporate level for about 20 years now and every business traveler I know falls into one of two camps: the "bargain hunter" and the "upgrader." The first is going to fly the cheapest flight they can get in order to save money for the bottom line. They don't particularly care that they are in boarding group B or C. They just know that $118 from Phoenix to Orange County is a good buy. But now, that flight is $239 and they can now go to USAir which is offering the same routing for $118. Your pricing structure has driven off the "bargain hunter" businessperson into the arms of another airline, not to mention us Average Joe's who chose Southwest because of the cheap fares regardless of the time of day. The "Upgrader" flies coach on Delta/United/American/etc. in hopes they can hit the upgrade elite status so that they have a very good change of moving up from coach to Business Class or First Class. It is there that they can open up the laptop and have room to actually do some work. The upgrade on Southwest is that you get on the plane first and you get a free cocktail. But, your seat will always come with the same pitch and width. My travelers want the chance to move up and get a better seat, not a free cocktail. Getting on the airplane first is unimportant because they have an assigned seat. So, Southwest is now chasing them away, too, and the arms of another airline is ready to accept them. In the video above, there are plenty of nods about how Southwest just HAS to change. But you never really state why. SW is one of the few profitable airlines with a business model that worked when Northwest Airlines was keeping people trapped on the tarmac in Detroit for 10-12 hours. Why does something that isn't broken need fixing? You don't need to change for the sake of change. So, with fares higher than other airlines, no real "upgrades" per se, and the death of a business model that worked, please let me know why I or my corporate travelers should fly SWA? ... View more