Southwest Airlines surprises flyers with its new and unusual boarding process — here’s who gets on the plane first

Southwest Airlines has been making a scope of changes, pinch nan bearer now charging for checked luggage and eliminating its celebrated unfastened seating argumentation successful favour of assigned seats.

From Jan. 27, 2026, passengers will now person assigned seats — but they’ll beryllium boarding otherwise from astir different carriers.

Per the Wall Street Journal, Southwest flyers will person a boarding walk that contains a boarding group and a number from 1 to 8 — unless they booked privilege boarding.

After privilege boarding, Southwest will mostly travel nan WILMA method — window, mediate and aisle — for boarding.

Passengers successful model seats will committee first, followed by those successful mediate seats and aisles, starting astatine nan backmost of nan plane.

“If queuing isn’t good, boarding isn’t good,” Lisa Hingson, managing head of innovation, told WSJ. “So we spent a batch of clip studying queuing.”

This method isn’t caller — United Airlines switched to this benignant of method a mates years ago, saying it was much efficient.

Southwest Airlines will modulation from boarding positions to boarding groups. Carlos Yudica – stock.adobe.com

But flyers pinch perks will automatically get an earlier boarding group, nary matter wherever their spot is.

Perks tin see frequent-flier status, summons type, spot type aliases in installments paper — and these group will beryllium successful group 1 aliases 2 sloppy of their seat.

This intends that those sitting toward nan beforehand of nan level that aren’t successful first people aliases privilege boarding could person problem pinch overhead bin abstraction for a carry-on bag. They’ll besides beryllium successful later boarding groups.

The Journal noted that they saw a boarding walk for a rider seated successful 12C, which is considered to beryllium a bully system spot connected immoderate hose — and nan rider was put successful group 7.

Passengers successful model seats will committee first, followed by those successful mediate seats and aisles, starting astatine nan backmost of nan plane. Gado via Getty Images

However, Southwest besides plans to connection a last-minute Priority Boarding action pinch move pricing, WSJ said, truthful those who salary tin subordinate nan privilege boarding group, which boards earlier group 1.

While nan pricing will alteration per flight, nan Journal noted that it costs $93 one-way connected a caller Phoenix-Dallas flight.

Passengers pinch disabilities and active-duty subject members will besides committee first.

Boarding passes will besides intelligibly authorities whether nan rider is sitting successful a window, mediate aliases aisle seat, truthful those caller to this strategy won’t request to stress.

“Since we’re moving distant from boarding positions, we wanted to beryllium very clear astir nan quality betwixt a boarding position and a seat,” Hingson said.