Southwest ended open seating. Here's the fare that still picks for you.

Yes, Southwest has assigned seats. For travel on or after 27 January 2026, every Southwest fare carries an assigned seat. You either pick it at booking or have one assigned closer to departure, and the fare you buy decides which of those you get.

Southwest spent decades letting you board in a scrum and grab any open seat. That ended, and if you've flown Southwest before, the muscle memory no longer applies. The rest of this guide covers what changed, how each fare behaves, what the three seat types get you, and when paying up for legroom earns its keep.

When the change starts

The cut-over date is 27 January 2026. Flights on or after that date are bookable with assigned seats; the old open-seating model applies to travel before it. As of June 2026 that switch is live and seats are selectable at booking, so for any trip you're planning now, assume assigned seating and book accordingly.

The booking flow itself will confirm it: either you're offered a seat to pick or you aren't. A rollout this size moves in stages, so treat the date as Southwest's line rather than a promise. The durable part of this guide is how the system works.

How seat choice works, fare by fare

Southwest renamed its fare bundles alongside the seating change, and seat selection is the clearest line between them. The names in brackets are the old ones, kept here because that's what returning flyers remember.

Fare	Seat you can select at booking	Old name
Basic	None (Standard seat assigned at check-in)	Wanna Get Away
Choice	Standard	Wanna Get Away Plus
Choice Preferred	Preferred, or any Standard	Anytime
Choice Extra	Extra Legroom, or any seat	Business Select

Two practical points sit underneath that table. First, the higher fares don't lock you into the pricier seat: Choice Extra includes Extra Legroom but lets you take any seat in the cabin, so you're buying the option, not a fixed row. Second, Basic isn't a dead end: you can still pay to choose a seat in the 48 hours before departure when one's available. You're just no longer choosing at booking, and the good seats thin out by then.

The deciding question is simple. If sitting somewhere specific matters to you, an aisle or two seats together, buy at least Choice so you can lock it in early. If you genuinely don't mind where you land, Basic and a check-in assignment will do.

There's a status layer on top of the fare, too. A-List members can pick a Standard or Preferred seat at booking on any fare, and A-List Preferred members can take any seat, Extra Legroom included. Southwest's top-tier credit cards carry similar booking-time selection; the lower card tiers get their pick inside the 48 hours before departure. If you hold status, the fare you buy matters less, but the logic doesn't change: the earlier you lock a seat, the better the seat.

The three seat types

Southwest's single-cabin 737 now sells three kinds of seat. None of them is a separate cabin. It's one economy cabin with three tiers of seat, priced accordingly.

• Extra Legroom: the roomiest, sitting at the front of the cabin and around the exit rows. Southwest quotes up to five extra inches of pitch on the 737-700; the exact gap varies by aircraft. These are the rows to target on a long flight.
• Preferred: a Standard-legroom seat positioned near the front of the cabin. You're paying for location and an earlier walk-off, not extra room.
• Standard: everything else, the bulk of the aircraft. A perfectly normal economy seat, and on a short flight there's nothing wrong with it.

Pitch is the honest differentiator here. Preferred and Standard share the same legroom; the gap that you can feel in your knees is the one between those two and Extra Legroom. Pay attention to that distinction, because the marketing groups Preferred with the upgrades while your legs group it with Standard.

It's also worth knowing what hasn't changed. This is still a single-class cabin; no business or first section is appearing on Southwest's 737s, and Extra Legroom is an economy seat with more room in front of it, not a different cabin with a different service. The exit-row rules still apply to the Extra Legroom rows that sit at the exits: you need to be willing and able to help in an evacuation, which rules those rows out for some travellers regardless of what they paid.

How this changes boarding

Boarding still uses numbered groups, but the logic flipped. It used to set your seat; now it follows it. Your boarding group is driven by fare, seat type and status: Extra Legroom and the higher fares board earlier, Basic boards last, and everyone on one reservation boards together. The scramble for a seat is gone, because the seat is already yours. Boarding now decides overhead-bin space and how soon you're settled, not where you sit.

The one thing not to lose in the change: bin space is now the thing boarding order protects. If you're carrying on and your bag needs the bin rather than the floor, an earlier group still matters, just for the locker above your head rather than the seat beneath you. For the full running order, what replaced A/B/C, and whether Priority Boarding is worth buying, see our guide to how Southwest boarding works now.

Picking the best seat on your Southwest flight

Once you can choose, the choice is worth a minute of thought, because the right seat on a 737 comes down to a few rows you can name in advance. The Extra Legroom rows near the exits are the clearest win on any flight long enough to feel the pitch. Near the front means a faster exit and a quieter cabin; toward the back means engine noise and the lavatory queue. We mark the legroom, the exit rows, and the seats to avoid on each of Southwest's aircraft, so you can see exactly where the good rows sit before you pay for one:

• Southwest 737-700 seat map: 137 seats, the smallest of the three
• Southwest 737-800 seat map: 175 seats
• Southwest 737 MAX 8 seat map: 175 seats, the newest of the fleet

Our maps flag 53 seats on the 737-800 and the MAX 8 with more room than standard, and 42 on the smaller 737-700, though the set Southwest sells at the full Extra Legroom pitch is a little smaller. That's a meaningful chunk of the cabin either way, and it's the front and exit rows that go first, which is the whole argument for choosing early rather than letting a Basic fare assign you the middle seat by row 30. The seat map is the fastest way to tell a genuine front-of-cabin Extra Legroom row from an exit-row seat with a fixed armrest or limited recline; the seat-type label alone won't.

When Extra Legroom (or Preferred) is worth paying for

Here's the verdict, anchored to the only thing that decides it: how long you're in the seat.

On a 90-minute hop like Dallas–Houston, Extra Legroom is hard to justify. The extra inches barely register on a flight that short, and Standard does the job. The exception is if you're tall enough that any economy seat is a negotiation; then the front rows are worth it at any length.

Past roughly three hours, the maths shifts. A transcon to the West Coast or a red-eye is where Extra Legroom earns the upgrade. Those are the legs where the difference between cramped and comfortable is the difference between arriving wrecked and arriving usable. If the front-of-cabin Extra Legroom rows are available, take them and don't overthink it.

Preferred is the trickier call. You're paying for position, not pitch, so it's only worth it when getting off the plane fast genuinely matters, like a tight connection or an early meeting. For the legroom itself, Preferred buys you nothing over Standard, so don't pay the Preferred premium expecting a roomier seat. If comfort is the goal, skip Preferred and put the money toward Extra Legroom instead.

The simplest rule: under three hours, Standard unless you're tall or in a hurry. Over three hours, Extra Legroom near the front. Treat Preferred as a boarding-and-exit convenience, not a comfort buy. And check the seat map first, because the row number tells you more than the seat-type label does.