Why would an airline with the closest thing to a cult following an airline can hope to achieve abandon all the features that made it good in the first place? 

Beginning in May 2025, Southwest Airlines—the no-frills, not-so-budget, mostly domestic airline of choice for college students, middle management, and frugal grandparents—is doing just that.

No more free checked bags. 

No more hovering over the “check in” button exactly twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes before your departure time.

No more queuing up behind the iconic stanchions. 

If you are among the plebs who fly Frontier (so named because stagecoaches have more amenities) or among the patricians who fly United or Delta, you may have no idea what I’m talking about. 

Southwest Airlines for the Uninitiated 

Southwest Airlines (pre-desecration) was a perfectly medium airline.

To efficiently meet the market need for a domestic commuter airline, Southwest adopted a beautifully simple business model: using one type of aircraft (the Boeing 737), with one type of seat—no first or business class, no extras. Just transportation across medium distances for a medium price. 

What’s the Deal with the Queuing?

Southwest’s commitment to efficiency manifested in multiple aspects of the Southwest experience, including their distinct boarding process. I promise, none of the orderly lines were actually cult-related. 

Instead of purchasing a window or aisle seat at time of booking, you would check into your flight twenty-four hours before departure to be assigned a boarding position—A 1–60, B1–60, or C1–60. Passengers would then line up and board in order of their assigned position, selecting any available seat. 

Some of us swiftly mastered the art of the prompt check-in and gleefully smiled at the less-organized C-Groupers as they shimmied between us into middle seats. 

The result was a smooth, efficient, and remarkably civilized boarding process. Although it may sound like letting people pick their seats would cause chaos, in fact, each flight united a few hundred busy, selfish people in a shared commitment to respecting the rules. In queuing for perhaps five or six dozen Southwest flights over the years, I noticed passengers rarely clogged the gate, argued with gate agents, or behaved rudely to fellow passengers. If your boarding group was B or C, you simply stayed seated until your letter was called. And lining up required passengers to politely interact with their fellow passengers for a few minutes before each flight, asking “Oh what number are you? I think I’m just behind you.” 

In short, Southwest’s boarding process was a phenomenon in the airport. Why did it work? My theory is that in an environment that doesn’t really treat people like people but like herds or, frankly, sometimes like wallets or luggage, an environment steeped in suspicion, stress, and complication, Southwest assumed the best of its passengers and treated them like smart, capable people. And we rose to the occasion. 

Four Words: Two FREE Checked Bags

Every passenger on every Southwest flight was entitled to two free checked bags, weighing up to fifty pounds. As a frequenter of bookstores when I travel, I have, at one time or another, checked much of my 700-volume library home on a Southwest flight. 

Farewell “Trans-fare-ency” 

Like every airline, Southwest has had its debacles and failures. Massive delays and cancellations during the December 2022 holidays resulted in significant lost revenue and trust. But in my experience, Southwest has always promptly and courteously addressed their mistakes, even when I have not requested it. 

In the single best customer service experience of my life, Southwest once gave me a $100 flight credit after I was stranded in Dallas for over four hours due to weather. I did not call or complain. Everyone could see the reason we were grounded—it was coming down in sheets out there. But a week or so after my trip, Southwest sent me an email informing me that a credit had been applied to my account as an apology for the inconvenience. 

In today’s world, everything seems like a racket. We’re buried in junk fees and fine print. Resolving issues or requesting any sort of assistance often requires navigating a labyrinth of automated messages, chat bots, and maddening hold music. In the midst of it all, Southwest Airlines projected honesty and goodwill.

For a while, Southwest used the marketing slogan “Trans-fare-ency.” And it was fitting. Rather than nickel-and-diming customers, Southwest offered an unpretentious, hassle-free transaction where no one was treated either like a spoiled child or steerage aboard the Titanic. It was one place in the frenzy of capitalism where money couldn’t buy you the ridiculous illusion of superiority and passengers were obliged to be decent to each other, at least for the boarding process.

Now Southwest is just like the other guys.

Whatever Southwest hopes to gain, we’ve all lost something, and it’s not just the opportunity to purchase an economical flight without having to also purchase each individual peanut and seat rivet you require. We’ve lost something that operated on a principle of fairness—by which I mean both adequacy and equality. Southwest Airlines used to be simply fair. And there was value in that.

Photo by Tomás Del Coro (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Emily Joy Stroble

Emily Stroble is a writer of bits and pieces and is distractedly pursuing lots of novel ideas and nonfiction projects as inspiration strikes. As an editorial assistant at Zondervan, she helps put the pieces of children’s books and Bibles together.  A lover of the ridiculous, inexplicable, and wondrous as well as stories of all kinds, Emily enjoys getting lost in museums, movies old and new, making art, the mountains of Colorado, and the unsalted oceans near Grand Rapids. Her movie reviews also appear in the Mixed Media section of The Banner and her strange little stories of the fantastic are on the Calvin alumni fiction blog Presticogitation. Her big dream is to dig her hands deep into the soil of making children’s books as an editor…and to finally finish her children’s novel.