Southwest Airlines reveals new seats, cabin designs

Southwest Airlines is getting a face-lift.

The Dallas-based carrier revealed details of a new onboard product Friday, featuring a refreshed look and a new seat design.

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The new cabins will be on board newly delivered jets starting in early 2025, the airline said. They were created in collaboration with Tangerine, a London-based design firm that’s worked on numerous airline products before — like Japan Airlines’ new A350 interiors. The cabins are based on what Southwest described as “extensive research” involving customers and employees and their “perceptions of color, comfort, and their aspirations for the overall onboard experience.”

The new seats were designed by Recaro and feature a few useful features, including an adjustable headrest and a personal device holder on seatbacks. Overall, the cabin features a deep blue hue with lighter blue accents. It has nods to the airline’s heart logo throughout, including woven into the carpet and on headrests.

Existing aircraft will not be retrofitted with the new interiors, Southwest said. However, all of the airline’s Boeing 737-800s and 737 MAX 8 jets are in the process of being reconfigured with an updated design that includes charging ports for personal devices and larger overhead bins.

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“Our redesigned cabin interior significantly enhances our inflight Customer experience and will complement the amazing service that our Crews provide,” Southwest Chief Customer Officer and Senior Vice President Tony Roach said in a statement.

Southwest told TPG that aircraft with the new interiors would feature the same layout as current aircraft. Recaro offers several lightweight yet comfortable economy seats that have proven popular with low-cost carriers for their slim size, allowing more seats to fit on a given aircraft. In some cases, those slim seats save so much space that an extra row or more can be fit into existing planes.

Most of Southwest’s fleet will feature either the brand new cabin, or the retrofit interior within the next few years, although the airline did not specify an exact timeline for the refurbishment of existing planes.

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