![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/swa_freebags.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
AP<\/a>: Southwest Airlines ditching bags fly free, eliminating their last real differentiator to competitors<\/span><\/p>\n And with the elimination of open seating as of the start of the 2025 season, Southwest Airlines has fully committed to blending into the landscape entirely, leaving them with no more real differentiators from their competition.\u00a0 Honestly, bags fly free, as small as it seemed in comparison to what they once were as one of the true alternatives in the airline playing field, was still something to consider for airline passengers planning a trip.<\/span><\/p>\n Sure, they kind of baked it into their general fares once you did some price shopping against other airlines plus bag fees, but if you played your cards right, Southwest was still a place where you could snag a bargain, if you had the flexibility or willingness to nudge your schedule around.<\/span><\/p>\n But with the elimination of bags fly free, it\u2019s apparent that Southwest no longer gives any shits about industry disruption and shaping their brand around being a friendlier alternative to the Deltas, Uniteds and Americans out there that are otherwise crowding the playing field, and prefers to be among the big dogs, raking in profits through a smorgasbord of industry collusion, fare hikes, fees, and general practice of cornering and exasperating consumers into feeling like they have no choice but to shell out in order to accomplish their travel objectives.<\/span><\/p>\n It’s funny, because regulation ended in the late 70s, partially so that airline companies could exercise some freedom to be creative, shake up the industry and ultimately strive towards some innovation and likely profit.\u00a0 But it was done because regulation was choking the industry out with standardized practices, policies, fares and routes, and everyone was basically the same despite operating under different banners.<\/span><\/p>\n In the grand spectrum of the airline industry today, regulation might have officially been deregulated in 1978 but make no mistake, regulation really isn\u2019t gone as far as practice goes.\u00a0 Between all the big dog airlines out there that have a stranglehold on most of the premier routes throughout the country and internationally, they\u2019re all basically the same despite having different names.<\/span><\/p>\n They\u2019re all ass-expensive nowadays, have as many taxes and fees as a Ticketmaster transaction, bags don\u2019t fly free and cost an arm, changes at their<\/em> behest fuck your schedule up, and changes at your<\/em> behest costs a leg.\u00a0 They all have shitty customer service, and when the day is over, coordinating airline travel isn\u2019t really that different than coordinating a trip to the movies.\u00a0 Sometimes we\u2019ll pay the extra and settle on having to deal with a shitty 3-D version of the film solely because the schedule is optimal, and it\u2019s not that different with flying the skies, we\u2019ll go with the airline that fucks us the least and isn\u2019t that terrible for our desired schedules.<\/span><\/p>\n In the end, the airline industry really has turned into absolutely nothing more than a game of hubs.\u00a0 Where smaller airlines squabble and compete over every single customer, the bigger dogs are all trying to gain footholds in regions, because the more regions they can hold higher market share in, the more they\u2019re simply going to win the wars of attrition solely based on routes.<\/span><\/p>\n Everyone knows that Atlanta is Delta country, Chicago is where United and American have giant presences, and all of them have smaller hubs across the country.\u00a0 Southwest seems content to keep their footings in places like Dallas, Baltimore and Phoenix, and instead of trying to keep customers happy or working to be the refreshing alternative to the rest of the market, they\u2019ll probably focus on gaining footing in other markets instead.<\/span><\/p>\n Either way, at this point, one change Southwest really should consider is allowing their flights to be searchable on aggregate comparison sites and scrapers like Kayak, Expedia and Travelocity.\u00a0 I have to imagine it was probably fucking them in the past, voluntarily not being searchable on third-party sites, trying to really push consumers to search directly and save some money, but since they\u2019re no longer trying to compete anymore, they may as well try to bail on this methodology and allow themselves to be searchable on aggregate sites; just like all their competitors do.<\/span><\/p>\n The bottom line is that I don\u2019t travel as much as I once did, but I always did like Southwest in that they flew directly from Atlanta to two places I like to be able to get to.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to outright blacklist them because that would only hurt myself, but I don\u2019t really have any reason to give them any preferable consideration over any competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n And as I\u2019ve said hundreds of times in my life, I miss AirTran, and I still hold a little salt at Southwest for Borg\u2019ing them just to get access to their routes, but then jacking up the fares on said routes to where it\u2019s difficult to consider them more often.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AP: Southwest Airlines ditching bags fly free, eliminating their last real differentiator to competitors And with the elimination of open seating as of the start of the 2025 season, Southwest Airlines has fully committed to blending into the landscape entirely, leaving them with no more real differentiators from their competition.\u00a0 Honestly, bags fly free, as … Continue reading Welp, absolutely no more reason to favor Southwest over anyone else<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[117,79,100,191,83,65,190],"class_list":["post-50457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-airports","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-greed","tag-observations","tag-travel","tag-white-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50459,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50457\/revisions\/50459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}