Southwest’s Optimistic Plan To Reduce Turn Times, Speed Up Boarding

Southwest is currently evolving its business model, given the carrier’s lagging financial performance, plus pressure from activist investors. We know some of the major changes that the airline plans to make, like adding preferred and extra legroom seating, and introducing redeye flights.

However, what I haven’t covered up until now is possibly the strangest part of the carrier’s transformation plan, which was revealed during the recent Investor Day event. Specifically, the airline wants to reduce turn times by five minutes, and claims that will free up the equivalent of 16 aircraft.

More from OMAAT Southwest Airlines Considers Boeing 787 Order, Plans Long Haul Flights Read more

Is this brilliant, or is Southwest grasping at straws here, and even a bit unrealistic? Cranky Flier covered this a few days ago, and I find it to be fascinating…

How Southwest plans to improve operational efficiency

Southwest prides itself in operational efficiency. Back in the day, the airline was known for its 25-minute turns, thanks to its open seating policy, no checked bag fees, and relatively small planes.

However, those days are long gone, and currently Southwest’s average turn times are roughly twice as long. This is at least in part because Southwest also flies larger Boeing 737 variants than in the past, so there are more people to deplane and board.

With Southwest trying to improve its economics, the airline is once again sees turn times as an opportunity. Specifically, the goal is to shave five minutes off of each aircraft turn, and if implemented correctly, the airline argues that this would free up the equivalent of 16 aircraft.

The challenge is that Southwest already has the best turn time in the industry, so can the airline go from best to even better? Southwest currently has an average of a 49-minute turn time, but the airline wants to reduce that to 44 minutes. This is way faster than the competition, though in fairness, the competition also flies planes that (on average) have more seats.

The legacy carriers fly wide body aircraft, while airlines like Frontier and Spirit also fly some more densely configured narrow body aircraft.

Wanting to reduce turn times is fair enough, but how does Southwest plan to accomplish that?

• The airline wants to go paperless on turns, so crews no longer have to wait on paperwork from ground agents, but rather the “paperwork” can be sent electronically to their tablets
• The airline wants to speed up passenger movement with “visual announcements,” and a “jet bridge experience” that includes playing fast-paced music to keep people moving
• The airline wants to improve communication between various employee groups, so that ramp agents, gate agents, flight attendants, and pilots, can communicate more efficiently with one another through a chat feature
• The airline wants to install ramp information displays, so that all employees are on the same page about how much time is remaining until the expected departure, etc.
• The airline wants to change how it goes about loading bags, so that those bags that need to make connections are loaded last, and therefore are unloaded first, avoiding additional delays

To Southwest’s credit, the airline is taking a very gradual approach to this change, and will be trialing this at some stations before fully implementing it. So this won’t be some operational disaster, because the airline can quickly backtrack with this plan if it doesn’t work out.

My take on Southwest’s efficiency initiative

On the one hand, I can’t help but sort of laugh that activist investors are trying to oust Southwest’s management, and rather than charging for checked bags or doing something radical, Southwest management instead comes up with the idea of reducing turn times by five minutes, by… *checks notes* playing fast-paced music in the jet bridge, among other things.

On the other hand, this does sound great on paper, and to investors. “Hey, we’re going to increase efficiency, and it’ll be the equivalent of adding 16 aircraft to our fleet.” I mean, who doesn’t want the equivalent of 16 extra planes, without actually having to acquire any planes?

However, there’s just so much here to unpack. First of all, it’s amazing how behind the times Southwest is with technology. The concept of ramp information displays and communication between crew members is something we’ve seen at other airlines for a long time, so Southwest is just playing catch up here.

Next, I’m curious about how exactly Southwest comes up with this freeing up 16 additional planes. Historically, the number of hours in the day hasn’t really been much of a consideration in Southwest’s strategy, given that the airline elected not to operate redeye flights, so all Southwest planes sat on the ground for many hours each day.

If an aircraft operates an average of five flights per day, and if you reduce turn times by five minutes, that frees up an extra 25 minutes. That’s not enough to operate an extra flight, so I assume the idea is that this increased efficiency would just allow the airline to completely reshuffle its schedule and fleet planning, and eventually sequence planes differently?

But all of this raises the question of what the limit is to how efficiently you can turn an aircraft when the variable is the American traveling public. Like, we’re not Japan, where you can board a full 777 in 20 minutes, because everyone listens and is considerate of others. I think the only thing that could actually materially speed up turn times would be boarding through both forward and rear doors (as we see at some European airlines), but most US airports aren’t really set up for that.

I also find it interesting how this change is being made around the same time that Southwest is transitioning to assigned seating. I’d be surprised if Southwest can maintain its current turn times, let alone improve them, while moving to assigned seating. The open seating sort of becomes a big game of musical chairs, and that probably helps with efficiency.

The last thing is that the tighter you schedule turns, the less buffer there is when there’s any sort of a delay, even if it has nothing to do with boarding. Southwest planes operate several flights per day, and one wonders if there will be a tradeoff between shorter turn times and operational reliability.

Bottom line

Southwest is hoping to reduce turn times by five minutes, from 49 minutes to 44 minutes. The airline has a variety of strategies to accomplish this, ranging from catching up to the competition with technology, to playing fast-paced music in the jet bridge.

Southwest already has the industry’s fastest turn times, and I question how realistic this goal is, especially with the airline also moving to assigned seating. Do you think Southwest can really get the average down to 44 minutes?

What do you make of Southwest’s goal of reducing turn times?