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Andrew Watterson

Andrew Watterson

Chief operating officer of Southwest Airlines

Aug 20, 2026

10:36
Do you have numbers on that? Like, is that the case of what you've been seeing?
10:40
Yes, our carry-ons, our kind of gate check bags are, I think, running about 10 bags per fly or something like that on average.
10:47
And so those changes we made subsequent to go live along with the higher loads is when you saw that crunch happen.
10:54
And what's interesting is kind of 30 minutes before departure when we start boarding, we are at all time highs of how early we board.
11:03
So at that 30 minutes, we on average, I think, start boarding like 27 minutes, which is almost mathematically impossible to be at 30 minutes.
11:09
So we start boarding better than ever, but we're not closing the door better than ever.
11:15
And it's that last 10 minutes when you have the confluence of the passengers and the bags.
15:41
Let's

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