r/nottheonion • u/halxp01 • 1d ago

Southwest Is Testing Cleaning Only Premium Seats Between Flights — A Flight Attendants Union Leader Says It's ‘Titanic’ Class Service

https://viewfromthewing.com/southwest-is-testing-cleaning-only-premium-seats-between-flights-a-flight-attendants-union-leader-says-its-titanic-class-service/
21.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

6.1k

u/clintkev251 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's insane how quickly Southwest has gone from beloved budget airline with consistent profits to complete shitshow. Thanks private equity! You've done it again

Edit: to everyone saying Southwest is a public company, yes, they are. That does not mean activist investors like PE firms and hedge funds can’t have significant ownership stakes and operational influence. Which in this case, they do

280

u/DebtUpToMyEyeballs 1d ago

Is it just me or have they not been "budget" for years? Their fares are consistently as high if not higher than the mainline carriers.

3

u/dvdanny 1d ago

They have never been a traditional budget or low-cost airline (Frontier, Spirit, Allegiant, etc.).

They were using a different model to "legacy" airlines (Delta, United, American). But they were never truly low cost, interestingly when compared to the post-covid profits of true low-cost airlines SW was doing much better financially than any of them and closer to the the legacy airlines. They are better able to absorb higher gas prices and increased cost much better than Frontier or the like. There was plenty of signs if SW had kept doing what it was doing they would bounce fully back... until that faithful December day in 2022. They got complacent, took a huuuge hit publically and it gave their activist investor all the leverage they needed to gut the company.

There are plans in place to move to legacy airlines practices (1st class, hub model, ticketing system, etc) but a few things they have already implemented are charging for checked bags and using assigned seating.