Southwest First Class Is Coming — It Will Be Bare Bones, But It Still Has to Happen

Southwest Airlines will add first class. It’s inevitable. But they’re going to underperform the industry with premium products. Still, it’s the only path forward for them:

• Once you have basic economy and a fare structure aimed to get customers to spend more, you need a product ladder. Just offering extra legroom seats (without extra width) doesn’t cut it. They don’t even let you reserve a blocked middle seat in the booking path. Buy up to what?
• Spirit Airlines has ‘first class’ and Frontier Airlines is adding first class. JetBlue is adding first class. Southwest is becoming just like the rest of the industry with bag fees and basic economy, they can’t possibly position themselves as less premium than Spirit.
• They need premium to attract credit card spend, just like they need lounges (JetBlue’s are effectively paid for by their bank partner) and international partners – not just for connecting passengers, but for points redemption. United’s miles and American’s can take you to Europe and Australia. Why accumulate Southwest’s miles, besides Companion Pass?

Southwest’s CEO admits they’e considering it. They have to be more than considering, because it’s a huge hole in their revenue strategy without it.

However Southwest’s first class is going to lag the industry. While galleys were designed with the ability to add ovens later, they’d need to do that also for hot food service.

Southwest’s seats don’t have screens. They don’t have standard power ports. This is a bare bones product, and they can’t earn a revenue premium. But since they’re following a model of copying the rest of the industry, it makes no sense to only add the fees, but not give customers something to buy up to. So they have to add first class. They just aren’t well-suited for the offering.

CEO Bob Jordan has been talking up a first class for months. Enilria says the decision was already made but they ran into supply chain issues with the seats.

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