Airline guide

Southwest Airlines: what changed, and what it means for your booking

Southwest spent 2025 and 2026 dismantling the things that made it different. Bags stopped being free, seats stopped being a scramble, and the boarding process was rebuilt. If your mental model of Southwest is more than a year old, it is out of date.

Last verified 23 August 2026Source: Southwest Airlines published policy

What changed, and when

Two structural changes landed close together, and which one applies to you can depend on when you bought your ticket.

• Checked bags stopped being free. The long-standing two-free-bags policy ended for tickets purchased from late May 2025. As of April 2026 the published charges are around $45 for the first bag and $55 for the second on applicable US mainland reservations.
• Assigned seating arrived. From January 2026 seats are assigned when you buy, in three categories: Standard, Preferred and Extra Legroom. The open seating free-for-all is gone.
• Boarding was rebuilt around up to eight groups, with your group determined by fare type and status rather than by how fast you checked in.

Free bags do still exist, but as a benefit rather than a default: the higher Choice Extra fare and top-tier A-List Preferred status carry two checked bags, while A-List members and Rapid Rewards credit card holders get the first one.

The thing nobody mentions: no interline agreements

This is the most important operational fact about Southwest and it is almost never explained to passengers. Southwest does not hold interline agreements with other airlines. In practice that means if your Southwest flight is cancelled, Southwest cannot rebook you onto a different carrier. It can only put you on another Southwest flight.

On a busy route with many daily departures that is a minor inconvenience. On a thin route, or during a widespread disruption, it can mean waiting a day or more where a legacy carrier would have moved you to a competitor within hours. Weigh that when the fare difference is small and the trip is time-critical.

Why Southwest is hard to compare

Southwest has historically not distributed its fares through the large online travel agencies, which is why it can be missing from a comparison you have already run. That has been changing, but the practical advice stands: if you have only checked a comparison site, you may not have seen Southwest at all. On many domestic routes it is a genuine option that simply was not in the results.

This is one of the few honest reasons a traveller benefits from having someone check more than one place.

How the network is shaped

Southwest flies point to point rather than through a small number of hubs, on an all-Boeing 737 fleet. Two consequences worth knowing: you are less likely to be routed via a distant connecting airport, and aircraft rotate through many cities in a day, so a delay early in the morning can propagate across the network by the afternoon.

When it is worth calling us instead of booking online

For a simple Southwest Airlines booking — one traveller, fixed dates, no complications — book it directly at www.southwest.com and save yourself a service fee. We are useful when the booking is not simple:

• Ten or more passengers, where the airline moves you to a group desk. See group flight booking.
• A child travelling alone, which most carriers will not let you complete online. See unaccompanied minors.
• A wheelchair, mobility aid, service animal or medical oxygen, which needs a service request filed against the reservation. See special assistance.
• A name that does not match the travel document on an issued ticket. See name corrections.
• Multi-city or open-jaw routing that a booking engine prices badly or refuses.
• Rebooking after a cancellation, at the hour it happens. See last minute flights.

Quick reference

Common questions about Southwest Airlines