Southwest Airlines will now offer redeye flights and assigned seats, breaking a 50-year tradition

Southwest Airlines will now offer assigned seating and redeye flights, a departure after more than 50 years, company officials said Thursday.

The air carrier has had open seating since it first took to the skies in 1971. Customer sentiment is a major driver behind the change.

Southwest said in a release that 80% of surveyed customers and 86% of surveyed potential customers preferred assigned seating to open seating. When customers opt for other air carriers over Southwest, most cite open seating as the reason for their decision.

In addition to assigned seats, Southwest is also designing a section of its cabins to have higher-priced seats with more legroom. These seats are slated to take up about one-third of the seats across the Southwest fleet.

The new cabin layout will require Federal Aviation Administration approval, and moving to assigned seating will require new procedures for managing that process.

Southwest said it will have more details on the changes later this year and expects to have them implemented sometime in 2025.

Moving to assigned seating and offering premium legroom options will be a transformational change. … Although our unique open seating model has been a part of Southwest Airlines since our inception, our thoughtful and extensive research makes it clear this is the right choice,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said.

In addition to altering seating and boarding, Southwest will also introduce 24-hour service and select overnight redeye flights starting on Feb. 14, 2025.

The first five redeye routes will be Las Vegas to Baltimore, Las Vegas to Orlando, Los Angeles to Baltimore, Los Angeles to Nashville and Phoenix to Baltimore.