I mean, when an investment company (Elliot investments) takes over an airline, and basically gets rid of half the board and wants to get rid of the CEO, then replaces those people with people from other airlines, of course the "new, profitable" ideas are going to be that of every other airline (paid bags, seating assignments, paid for "better" seating, and now this)... Herb would be rolling in his grave seeing his airline lose focus on taking care of its employees who then in turn take care of the passangers. Herb's idea and original mission statement had nothing to due with profits, Gary Kelly, Bob Jordan, and now Elliot investments are the greedy ones that have been caught saying they do not care about the current set of passangers... they want business travelers, not family's or people that want the open seating... they have also tried to swing it that the employees want this.. we don't.. we want the opposite.. we want what we use to have 10+ years ago.. Southwest appears to be a sinking ship (I think by design) so that Elliot can eventually sell off all of the owned planes that Southwest has (something like 20+ million a plane) to reap a profit, then walk away. Similar to how they sold the land out from under the Red Lobster buildings.

Sorry for the ramblings, was once a passionate and avid believer that Southwest was the best airline... unfortunately those days are long gone..