The airline doesn’t have assigned seating, so paying extra to get a better seat might appeal to some passengers.
Still, the company has shunned extra charges for checked bags and other services that rival carriers are using to boost revenue during the recession. It has even touted that strategy in some of its advertising.
The EarlyBird Check-In option will be available for travel beginning Thursday and will reserve a spot ahead of families with young children.
The airline also recently added fees for minors traveling alone.
“The big difference between [the check-in service] and a bag fee is this is strictly optional,” Kevin Krone, Southwest’s vice president of marketing, told The Associated Press in an interview.
Some have said Southwest is losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars a year by not charging for bags. And indeed, CEO Gary Kelly has only ruled the fees out at least through the end of 2009.
“Any kind of increase in revenue airlines can generate, they are going to do it,” Hunter Keay, an analyst with Stifel Nicholaus & Co., told Bloomberg News.
Southwest is the second-largest carrier at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, behind American Airlines and its sister carrier American Eagle.
Southwest also announced this week that it is cutting daily flights in 92 markets starting Jan. 9. The carrier will add service in 42 others to adjust its schedule to the slower winter travel season.
RDU will not be affected, airport spokeswoman Mindy Hamlin said.
But a separate round of cuts in November will hit RDU. The airline will eliminate one daily flight to Las Vegas, leaving only one to that city. And it will trim its daily flights to Philadelphia from five to four.
The cuts will give Southwest 27 daily departures at RDU, Hamlin said.
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