Southwest says 80% of its customers didn’t like the unassigned seating policy. But I will miss it.

Fast and easy boarding process

Calmness wasn’t the only thing Southwest’s strategy had going for it.

“They were the fastest in the industry forever in terms of the boarding process that they used,” Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who came up with a plane-boarding method that he says is faster than any used by the airlines.

Steffen’s boarding process was even tested against Southwest’s on PBS’s “Making Stuff Faster” over a decade ago. (Spoiler alert: Steffen’s process won, but the Southwest representative on the show said he did not think it was practical enough in real-world situations.)

But as my own Southwest flight Wednesday night reminded me, the open boarding method is fast — in part because people naturally spread out as they try to pick window and aisle seats up and down the plane before filling in the middles.

I happened to get particularly lucky on my flight. My partner and I boarded at the end of group A and grabbed an aisle and window seat in an empty row, of course with the hope that no one would sit in the middle. The plane wasn’t full, and we ended up having the row to ourselves.

But even on full flights, as long as we check in as soon as possible we almost always sit together.

Some families also love Southwest’s open seating policy for this reason. Similar to other airlines, Southwest allows families with children under seven to board early, between A and B groups, allowing them to generally find seats together. For some people, they find it easier than picking seats for everyone in advance.

Part of the Southwest brand

Though many customers may ultimately welcome the change, the open seating has been an integral part of the Southwest brand for over half a century, in addition to its two free check bags (which the airline says isn’t going away) and low-cost fare options.

“You can’t mistake a Southwest gate when you walk up to it,” Cudahey said of the airline’s pillars that mark the boarding numbers for passengers to line up next to.

It’s possible Southwest will find a way to maintain a boarding system that still uses those pillars, and that still maintains the calmness at their gates that always greets me like a warm hug in an otherwise chaotic airport.

But without the open seating, the airline is losing part of what sets it apart — even if that means gaining new customers.

“It really kind of comes down to is their cult following getting in the way of a broader appeal?” Steffen said.