How many seats are available on a Southwest flight? How to get a better boarding position

Michael Salerno, Arizona Republic
·4 min read
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Chances are when you book a flight, you have the option to select where you want to sit ahead of time.

Not if you book with Southwest Airlines. They have an open-seating policy: There are no seat assignments and all seats are first come, first served.

Whether you can land anything but the dreaded middle seat, or if you can sit together with your family, will depend on your boarding group and place in line. If you're in the last group to board, your seating choices will be limited.

Finding out how many seats are available on a Southwest flight isn't easy because of this open-seating policy. Here's how you can find out what seats to look for on a Southwest flight before you go and what options Southwest offers to improve your place in boarding.

Find your gate: What terminal is Southwest at the Phoenix airport?

How do I find out how many seats are available on a Southwest flight?

There's no easy way to find out. Because it doesn't offer seat assignments, Southwest does not show a map of available seats during the booking process.

Some discussion boards that focus on Southwest flights, including the airline's community forum, suggest searching on Southwest's website for an itinerary for eight passengers — the maximum number that can be booked online — and check if it can make the reservation.

If a flight has few seats left, Southwest's website will show the number of seats left below the price in small, red text. But these are the only seats remaining under a certain fare class, not necessarily the last seats on the plane.

How do seats work on Southwest?

When you check in, you'll be assigned a boarding group (A, B or C) and boarding position (1-60), which determines the boarding order. People in the A group are most likely to get their preferred seats, while people in the C group, particularly those with a high boarding number, are most likely to find only middle seats or last-row seats available.

How can you see the seat layout on a Southwest plane?

One way you can see out the layout of Southwest planes ahead of time is to look up seat plans or seat maps for the planes used in the flights.

Southwest flies several versions of the Boeing 737, including the 737-700, 737-800 and 737 MAX 8. The 737-700 has 143 seats in 24 rows, while both the 737-800 and 737 MAX 8 have 175 seats in 30 rows.

SeatGuru, a travel website owned by Tripadvisor, allows visitors to view the layouts of these planes and read reviews of the seats from people who traveled on the plane.

Some seats are color-coded to indicate their quality. Green seats are "good" seats and typically have the best legroom, yellow seats have caveats like the seat not reclining or being in an emergency exit row, and red seats are "bad" seats, typically the last row or seats near the bathroom.

How can I get a better boarding position on Southwest?

One way Southwest allows passengers to obtain a better boarding position is EarlyBird Check-In, where a passenger pays a fee — starting at $15 per flight, it varies with demand — to have their position assigned 12 hours before general boarding positions become available. However, this does not guarantee you'll get into boarding group A.

But passengers don't have this option on all flights. Southwest recently began limiting EarlyBird Check-In on some flights and days.

Southwest offers two other options that can give passengers a better boarding position:

  • Upgraded boarding: This allows passengers to claim the best available A group position from A1-A15 for flights departing within 24 hours. Prices start at $30 per passenger and varies depending on demand.

  • Booking a Business Select ticket: Passengers in this class are guaranteed boarding positions from A1-A15. Southwest also recently began offering free in-flight internet for Business Select passengers. Business Select is the highest fare class Southwest offers.

Coming to new Southwest concourse: A Guy Fieri restaurant and PGA Tour simulator

Reach the reporter at Michael.Salerno@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @salerno_phx.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How many seats are available on Southwest? Boarding-position tips