From today’s New York Times:
Southwest Airlines on Tuesday said it would start charging for checked bags, ending another longtime policy that had set it apart from other airlines as it seeks to boost revenues and cut costs.
Customers with high loyalty status will be spared from the fee, but all others will have to pay for checked bags for flights booked starting on May 28. The announcement represented Southwest’s latest decision to drop a practice that had made it unique — and appealing — to customers.
The airline is also working to add premium seats with extra legroom, end its open-seating policy and recently started offering red-eye flights. When it announced those changes in September, Southwest said that it would retain its beloved bag policy, which its own studies had found was a key differentiator for customers.
When Glen Hauenstein, the president of Delta Air Lines, was asked at an investor conference on Tuesday about whether the shift would benefit other carriers, he said: “Clearly, there are some customers who chose them for that and now those customers are up for grabs. We’ll see how that plays out.”
But Southwest’s policy of allowing two free checked bags was costly. The airline carries nearly twice as many bags as its peers, which can slow operations, its chief executive, Bob Jordan, said at the conference.
And despite the airline’s studies showing the popularity of the policy, newer data on sales through third-party websites — which Southwest expanded dramatically over the past year — suggest that the free bags were not as powerful a differentiator as previously thought.
Read the complete story here.