The first Southwest Airlines planes with extra-legroom seats are set to make their debut in service next month. And — for now — they’ll be free of charge for those few customers lucky enough to snag one.
Southwest expects to deploy its first newly retrofitted aircraft sporting the more spacious rows May 1, the Dallas-based carrier announced.
It’s a key milestone in the airline’s shift to assigned and extra-legroom seating, a bold move announced last year that, executives said, was driven by exhaustive customer research.
Southwest’s new extra-legroom layout
As seen in a seat map revealed in recent days, Southwest customers will find extra-legroom seats in the first five rows of its newly updated Boeing 737-800 and 737 MAX 8 jets — due to be retrofitted first, keeping with plans the airline laid out last year.
Three additional rows surrounding the exit doors in the middle of the aircraft will be configured with the extra space, too.
In all, Southwest hopes to wrap up all of its cabin reconfigurations between April 30 and the end of this year, in order to meet its goal of launching the sale of assigned and extra-legroom seats during the early part of 2026.
Technically, the airline doesn’t plan to start selling tickets under its assigned seating model until the third quarter of 2025, which runs from July through September, for flights departing early next year.
But, as TPG first reported last fall, Southwest customers won’t have to wait until then to start seeing the more spacious rows on certain Southwest flights. Rather, they’ll start appearing on planes months before the airline’s open-seating setup ends — and that will begin May 1.
A ‘soft launch’ of extra-legroom seats
Over the coming months, crews at the airline’s maintenance bases in Denver, Phoenix, Houston and Atlanta will quietly return Southwest’s planes to service after installing the more spacious rows.
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Exacty how will customers know if their plane has the extra-legroom rows?
They probably won’t, executives told TPG earlier this year. Think of it as a “soft launch,” of sorts.
“I think it’ll be a nice surprise when customers walk on,” now-departed Executive Vice President Ryan Green told me in January.
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How to get an extra-legroom seat on Southwest
Until the airline officially makes the shift to open seating, customers with A-group boarding will certainly have the best shot at scoring an extra-legroom seat on flights offering the new layout.
Customers who have A-List elite status, or who purchase its EarlyBird or Upgraded Boarding products, will also have a better chance at scoring one of those seats.
But with hundreds of jets due to get refitted between now and the end of the year, your chances of being on a plane with the new layout will steadily increase over the coming months.
“An increasing percentage as you go throughout the year,” Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told me in January. “That’ll be part of the experience. You just can’t count on it [until next year] so we don’t want to sell it until you can count on it.”
Other changes planned
As part of the retrofit, maintenance teams will also install in-seat power outlets and larger overhead bins on aircraft that don’t already sport those cabin features.
Standard seats in Southwest’s 737-800 and MAX 8 cabins will lose legroom to make way for the extra-legroom seats. The seat pitch on those planes (the measurement from a fixed point on one seat to the same point on the seat in front) will drop from 32 inches to 31.
After the peak summer travel season ends, the carrier will proceed with retrofits to its smaller 737-700 aircraft. Standard seats on those planes will not lose legroom.
Bottom line
Southwest’s shift away from open seating is set to bring other changes to the airline, too, including tweaks to the benefits offered to A-List elite status members and cobranded Rapid Rewards credit card holders.
Plus, the airline is preparing to pivot on its longstanding, unique boarding process.
The month of May will also bring the start of checked baggage fees at an airline long known for its generous “bags fly free” policy.
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