{"id":91064,"date":"2025-07-25T09:52:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T09:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/91064\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T09:52:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T09:52:22","slug":"how-are-flyers-reacting-to-southwest-bag-fees-basic-fares-travel-weekly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/91064\/","title":{"rendered":"How are flyers reacting to Southwest bag fees, Basic fares?: Travel Weekly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southwest has recorded better-than-expected results from its May 28 implementation of bag fees<\/a>. But the carrier’s replacement<\/a> of its Wanna Get Away fare bundle that same day with a basic economy fare caused a revenue hit for the three weeks that followed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the airline’s July 24 call to discuss its second-quarter earnings, executives said that Southwest was selling a higher-than-expected rate of paid bags per passenger, and that the rate is in the middle to high end of the U.S. industry.<\/p>\n

As a result, said chief financial officer Tom Doxey, the airline expects to earn $350 million this year just in bag fees.<\/p>\n

Southwest also stressed during the call that the bag-fee rollout took place without operational problems. Since not all bags fly free at Southwest any longer, planes are loaded with more carry-on bags than before. And checked-bag totals are down about a third. But incidents of gate agents asking flyers to gate-check their bags have only increased modestly, chief operating officer Andrew Watterson said.<\/p>\n

CEO Bob Jordan also said flyers aren’t booking away to another airline.<\/p>\n

“There’s no customer reaction to bag fees,” he said.<\/p>\n

The story, at least for a short while, was different with basic economy.<\/p>\n

A dip when Southwest switched to Basic\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Watterson said that from May 28 through June 15, the airline lost out on bookings as flyers went to their website and saw the no-frills Basic product, which doesn’t come with bags and doesn’t allow changes without a fare upgrade. Wanna Get Away had come with two free bags, no change fees and other perks not matched by the Basic fare.<\/p>\n

As a result, the airline took a hit of half a percentage point in the second quarter in its revenue per available seat mile and expects a further hit of one percentage point this quarter.<\/p>\n

However, Doxey said, those third-quarter impacts are for flights purchased but not yet flown. The booking losses caused by the Basic fare came to an end mid-June and are not an ongoing problem, he said.<\/p>\n

Overall, Jordan expressed confidence with Southwest’s ongoing commercial transformation, which takes its next big leap on July 29 when the carrier opens the books on assigned seats and extra-legroom seats<\/a> for flights beginning Jan. 27.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jordan said Southwest was on track to achieve its 2025 goal of $1.8 billion in incremental earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) due to new initiatives and cost-saving measures.<\/p>\n

Southwest’s Q2 results, by the numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the second quarter, Southwest reported net income of $213 million, down from $367 million during the second quarter of 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The airline reported operating revenue of $7.2 billion, down 1.5% percent and $50 million below analyst expectations, according to the investment website Seeking Alpha. Operating expenses were $7 billion, up 0.9% from 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Southwest stock was down nearly 12% in late afternoon trading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southwest has recorded better-than-expected results from its May 28 implementation of bag fees. But the carrier’s replacement of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":91065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[20578,13021,64,57482,57483,52,57484,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-91064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-airline-news","9":"tag-aviation","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-facebook-stories","12":"tag-linkedin-stories","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-twitter-stories","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114913263259357620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}