Southwest’s new seat fees aren’t just changing over time — they’re changing by passenger, even when two travelers are looking at the same seat on the same flight. In one example, a Companion Pass flyer saw an exit row seat priced at $45 for them but $26 for their companion, and similar screenshots and reports are piling up across social media.
Seat assignments are no longer ‘first come, first served’ on Southwest. And passengers are seeing different prices for the same seat being offered on the same flight – depending on who you are. In fact, Southwest’s most loyal customers seem to be asked to pay more than infrequent ones.
Reader Jason shared this experience which turns out to be something that many Southwest flyers are complaining about:
I am an A list member with southwest and have companion pass. when I went to upgrade a flight this morning I noticed my account is being charged $15 more to get an extra legroom seat than they are charging my companion.Pictured below is flight 1594 from Las Vegas to Portland. I had the same thing on my flight from milwaukee to Orlando on saturday..
Southwest was charging them $15 more for the same exact seat than for their companion. Here’s another example shared online in recent days, where the difference was $26 for the same seat – with the Companion Pass holding customer asked to pay more.
Booked basic fare ticket for 1/30 and have a SW Plus CC. Today I was able to select a little bit better standard seat. I also have a companion pass; when checking the prices for the exit row for me, $45, but for my companion the same seat was $26. What’s that all about? (Actually all of the $$ seats for me were twice the price of my husband’s seat.)
And here’s another discussion of Southwest’s personalized pricing in the past few days:
I have companion pass and am a Chase Southwest Performance Business cardholder. …On the exact same flight, the price for the exact same seats are more for me than for my companion. Were we expecting Southwest to charge different prices for seats for different people?
…I understand the price of seats changing over time, perhaps due to supply/demand, but not charging different prices for different people at the same moment. I thought this had to be wrong – but triple-checked, logged out of each account and back in, and sure enough – different prices.
Does Southwest Charge Different Prices For The Same Seats To Different People?
byu/nyse_19 inSouthwestAirlines
This has apparently been going on for months, because while this week was the first time Southwest was flying with assigned seats they’ve been selling seat assignments for these flights since July 29.
I didn’t have charging their best customers more for the same product on my bingo card for the ‘new Southwest’ but I suppose a loyal customer penalty does now seem on brand, the more I think about it.
