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 vary of modifications, with the provider now charging for checked baggage and eliminating its well-known open seating coverage in favor of assigned seats.

From Jan. 27, 2026, passengers will now have assigned seats — but they’ll be boarding otherwise from most other carriers.

Per the Wall Street Journal, Southwest flyers can have a boarding cross that accommodates a boarding group and a quantity from 1 to 8 — unless they booked precedence boarding.

After precedence boarding, Southwest will largely observe the WILMA technique — window, center and aisle — for boarding.

Passengers in window seats will board first, adopted by those in center seats and aisles, beginning at the back of the plane.

“If queuing isn’t good, boarding isn’t good,” Lisa Hingson, managing director of innovation, told WSJ. “So we spent a lot of time studying queuing.”

This technique isn’t new — United Airlines switched to this form of technique a couple years in the past, saying it was more environment friendly.

But flyers with perks will robotically get an earlier boarding group, no matter where their seat is.

Perks can embody frequent-flier standing, ticket kind, seat kind or credit card — and these people will probably be in group 1 or 2 regardless of their seat.

This means that those sitting toward the entrance of the plane that aren’t in first class or precedence boarding may have hassle with overhead bin space for a carry-on bag. They’ll also be in later boarding teams.

The Journal famous that they noticed a boarding cross for a passenger seated in 12C, which is taken into account to be a good economic system seat on any airline — and the passenger was put in group 7.

However, Southwest also plans to offer a last-minute Priority Boarding option with dynamic pricing, WSJ said, so those who pay can be part of the precedence boarding group, which boards before group 1.

While the pricing will range per flight, the Journal famous that it value $93 one-way on a latest Phoenix-Dallas flight.

Passengers with disabilities and active-duty navy members will also board first.

Boarding passes will also clearly state whether or not the passenger is sitting in a window, center or aisle seat, so those new to this system gained’t need to stress.

“Since we’re moving away from boarding positions, we wanted to be very clear about the difference between a boarding position and a seat,” Hingson said.