canyonwalker | Flying Southwest with Assigned Seats

San Diego SKO travelog #2
38,000' over California · Mon, 9 Feb 2026. 11am.

Today was my first flight with Southwest since they changed away from their most signature policy, the thing that identified them and differentiated them for over 50 years: no assigned seats. Just under two weeks ago Southwest moved to an assigned-seats model, making them like virtually every other commercial airline under the sun.

I wasn't sure what it'd be like flying with them so soon after the changeover. Honestly I expected that it'd be chaos, with many customers not understanding the change and harangued employees not able to keep up. I expected to find someone already in my primo seat, telling me, "Well, I'm sitting here already, pick another seat."

So, how was it?

There were goods and bads. Here are Five Things:

The numbered metal stanchions we Southwest flyers are all familiar with from the past 20 years were already gone, replaced with just two boarding lanes. There are 8 boarding groups, numbered 1 through 8, and the two lanes have screens above them that display alternating numbers. In addition to this there were two other lanes, one of them for preboards and the other for "priority" passengers. The signs do not identify what constitutes a priority passenger. Apparently many people assumed it was a self assessment; I noted with some dismay that there were at least 20 people queued up for the priority lane. By contrast there were only 3 of us in the Group 1 lane.

The gate agents are more assertive about line order now than before. I watched the agent refuse boarding to fully two-thirds of the people queued up in the "priority" lane. Evidently just because you think you're a priority doesn't mean Southwest agrees. 🤣 It's ironic, though, the agents are such sticklers for boarding order now, as boarding earlier than you're entitled means way less with assigned seats than it did for the 50+ years when seats were first-come, first-chosen.

There were way fewer medical preboards than usual for southwest. There were only 2 out of 150+ passengers. Typically there'd be at least 8 on a busy weekday morning flight like this. It seems like moving to assigned seats has, as expected, reduced the problem of "fake" preboarders gaming the system.

On the whole the boarding process went smoothly, with passengers figuring out how assigned seats work. I didn't hear any "Excuse me, you're in my seat" misunderstandings. Of course, anybody who's flown any other airline already knows this.

The one place where we got tripped up on boarding, which resulted in us leaving over 10 minutes late, was running out of bin space for carry-on bags. Some 8-10 people spent a looong time trying to shove their bags in multiple places where they didn't fit. The gate agents needed to be more assertive about asking people to gate-check their bags before boarding. Usually they are, so probably what happened with this flight was a fluke.

I'm more satisfied with Southwest's change to assigned seats than I thought I'd be. We'll see how often I can keep scoring good seats, though, especially when I have to book just a few days out instead of weeks in advance.