Southwest Airlines says it is abandoning a decades-long policy of allowing two free checked bags per passenger. Southwest Airlines will begin charging customers a fee to check bags, abandoning a decades-long practice that executives had described last fall as key to differentiating the budget carrier from its rivals.
“This is how you destroy a brand. This is how you destroy customer preference. This is how you destroy loyalty. And this, I think, is going to send Southwest into a financial tailspin,” airline industry analyst Henry Harteveldt, of Atmosphere Research Group, told CBS News senior transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave. “Southwest, with these changes, becomes just another airline.”
Just last September, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told Van Cleave bags would continue to fly without charge.
“Bags will still fly free,” Jordan said. “It’s the third thing customers look for after fare and schedule: Bags fly free, on us. Ninety-seven percent are people who are aware of our policies. So it’s a huge consumer advantage. So bags will absolutely fly free.”
But when pressed if they’d always fly free, he acknowledged, “Well, never say never. … It’s like saying open seating would never change 20 years ago. Consumer preferences change, but from everything that we see, there’s no reason to reconsider this at all, especially right now.”
“When 97% of your customers say they fly you because of your ‘bags fly free’ policy and you make dramatic changes to it, you are telling almost all of your customers, ‘Your business doesn’t matter to us anymore,'” Harteveldt said. “We are watching an airline self-destruct.
This is the equivalent of deliberately sailing a ship into an iceberg.”
The cost of a checked bag hasn’t been announced but airline sources say it will be competitive with other carriers.
