I have said for many years that if I blindfolded you, and put you on a US domestic airline you would not know which airline you were on, unless it was Southwest. All the other airlines are basically the same. They compete on routes and not much else.
I have limited experience with Delta because I never flew their routes very often. So now, if I have a choice, I don’t choose them because I have “status” with the other airlines that gets me better perks.
This was not true with Southwest. While some people didn’t like their open seating concept, I didn’t mind it, and I loved their efficiency. I used to say that on other airlines you could arrive at the gate and still wait for half an hour to get the Jetway opened and deplane. Whereas on Southwest, when the plane arrived at the gate, the Jetway hit the door, and the door was opened. You could be off the plane before other airlines even knew their plane had arrived.
I don’t know about you, but one of the things I like best about flying is getting off the plane quickly. I heard a story many years ago that Southwest crews were given “pit crew” training to become more efficient at turning planes around. I remember waiting for an American Airlines flight in Orange County, CA that had arrived 20 minutes late and hearing the pilot come into the gate area (good for him), and announce that we would be boarding in about 45 minutes because you “…just can’t turn a 737 around in less than 45 minutes.” I said out loud that he should go down a few gates and watch Southwest do it in 20 minutes … routinely.
To be fair, Southwest has had their turnaround times creep up to closer to 45 minutes over the years as 737s got larger and they appeared to care less about efficiency.
Another difference used to be the irreverent humor of many of their flight attendants. Haven’t heard any of that in years.
Basically, Southwest has become just like every other major US airline except for open seating. And their famous “one class” of service. The irreverent flight attendants used to say it was all first class. Well apparently, that’s going away too. Open seating used to allow them to board the passengers faster, thus a shorter turn-around time. Planes in the air make money, planes on the ground do not. Given their movement to similar turnaround times as the other airlines, open seating is not really a benefit any longer. Surveys of their customers have found that most of them prefer assigned seating. That may be true, but their flights are still quite full based on my personal data.
Anyway. Southwest has recently announced that they are going to be just like all the other airlines starting in 2025. Assigned seats, more leg room sections, etc. As far as I can tell, they aren’t going to have a first class. This will then erase any difference they have compared to other airlines and selecting the airline will come down to routes.
Sad to see this happen but they lost their efficiency advantage a while ago, and they have never been about charging more, so profits have to suffer. So, they might as well go to the same model as the other major airlines. How long til they start charging for checked bags?
Valid concerns, Mitch. Exactly what crossed my mind when I heard this news, too.
It seems that companies’ tendency toward sameness is financially driven: costs are too high to afford the Customer Engagement Strategy that differentiated them before.
CXM relies on both Customer Engagement Strategy and Customer Alignment Strategy.
Engagement (what the customer experiences) is empowered or handicapped by Alignment (how the value creators, communicators, fulfillers, rescuers, and reinforcers are aligned).
Engagement Strategy is design of Marketing, Sales, Service Delivery/Success, Support across the customer life cycle.
Alignment Strategy is non-customer-facing roles and customer-facing roles and Board and partners and suppliers getting on the same page to maximize customer outcomes as the best path to maximizing business outcomes.
Companies only have the luxury to be special forever in Engagement Strategy as long as the Alignment Strategy is in-sync.
Maximizing usage of customer insights to guide everyone’s decisions is key to falling into the sameness trap out of financial necessity.
For those of us who were one-time customer advocates, and who often extolled the distinctive virtues of Southwest, it’s sad to see this happening. Herb Kelleher, a CX and EX icon who strongly believed in the positive and unique travel experience offered by Southwest, the airline he founded, would be very displeased about the “creeping meatballism” move to conventionality and commoditization by current management.
Hi Mitchell: thank you for this post. No epiphany that with deregulation, air travel has become commoditized. As a boomer, I can remember distinct brand image differences between TWA, Eastern, Pan Am, and Braniff International. There are other defunct airlines I could add to the list, but I’ll stop here.
My position is that airlines continue to differentiate their brand, but in ways that – to some – are less flamboyant than I experienced when I was younger. Customers have different needs, wants, and desires today. On time departure and arrival, cost, schedule convenience, overall travel time to destination are now highly important to travelers. Sure, Southwest famously capitalized on quirky and memorable pre-flight safety explanations. They did other counter-intuitive things that people loved. (Though personally, I was never a fan of Southwest’s open seating policies. It added more uncertainty to an already uncertain flying experience, and I put up with it only when I had little other choice.)
As laudable as Southwest’s gate turnaround practices are (or were), they are enabled by Southwest’s point-to-point route strategy – which at the time it was introduced, was an industry ‘disruptor’. So comparing Southwest gate turnaround time to say American’s should take into account which scheduling risks occur in a point-to-point system (it’s not risk free, or even lower-risk, for that matter). Early on, Southwest took point-to-point to the bank and for a good long run point-to-point helped Southwest beat the bleep out of klunkier hub-and-spoke carriers such as United, American, and Delta. Then, things changed, and point-to-point became fraught with risk and concomitant customer-sat problems, and hub-and-spoke started looking pretty good to travelers.
Wendover Productions created an excellent video a few weeks ago that provides excellent insight into Southwest’s (and other point-to-point carriers) operational challenges. (Why Budget Airlines are Suddenly Failing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Pu3CXatsA