Southwest has had a big problem with boarding and deplaning since moving to assigned seats two weeks ago. Flight attendants have had reserved overhead bin space at the front of the cabin, so passengers in extra legroom seats haven’t had bin space above their seats.
That pushes those passengers to move their bags to other bins, and there’s a knock on effect as other passengers don’t have bins available near their own seats. Passengers are moving up and down the aisle of the cabin stowing their bags and returning to seats at the start of the flight, and retrieving their backs on arrival.
So the airline has decided to move dedicated overhead bin space for flight attendants to the back of the cabin. And their union does not like it.
Flight attendants get off the plane last, so it seems to make sense to have their bags at the back. They are also free to move about the cabin much more easily than passengers, so can access bags as-needed.
Some don’t like it because on certain aircraft the forward bins lock, and the rest don’t. There’s an urban legend about passengers taking flight attendant bags. The real issue of course is not enough bin space for bags so there are tradeoffs in Southwest’s move to extract more revenue, and those have brand and flight turn efficiency downsides.
Dedicated overhead bins for flight attendants above rows 2 and 3 aren’t new. It became more of an issue with charging for checked bags, because passengers bring as much into the cabin as possible. And with assigned seats passengers are immediately boarding – with those paying the most for their seats boarding first and finding no bin space above those seats – causing a problem of finding bin space at the very beginning of the boarding process.
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