Southwest gets pricier
Southwest Airlines raised checked‑bag fees by $10 for tickets booked after April 9, bringing the first checked bag to $45 and the second to $55, undercutting the airline’s former ‘bags fly free’ image (audacy.com) (nbcdfw.com). The carrier also limits passengers to one portable charger (power bank) per person, capped at 100 watt‑hours, and requires it to be kept on your person or under the seat because of fire risk (nationaltoday.com) (the-independent.com).
Southwest built years of advertising around “bags fly free,” and now a standard checked bag on many tickets costs $45 each way if you book or voluntarily change the trip on or after April 9, 2026. A second checked bag now costs $55 each way. (swamedia.com) (southwest.com) The change does not hit every passenger the same way. Southwest says Choice Extra fares and Rapid Rewards A-List Preferred members still get two free checked bags, while Basic, Choice, and Choice Preferred fares now face the new fees. (southwest.com) (swamedia.com) Southwest is not pretending this came out of nowhere. In its April 7 statement, the airline said the increase came after an “ongoing analysis of the business” and an “evolving global backdrop,” language it used as jet-fuel costs have been rising across the industry. (swamedia.com) (airlinegeeks.com) That also puts Southwest closer to the rest of the United States airline business it spent years trying to look different from. Recent coverage of the fee change notes that United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and JetBlue Airways have also raised bag fees, so Southwest is moving toward the same playbook instead of away from it. (airlinegeeks.com) (nbcdfw.com) At the same time, Southwest is tightening a different part of the travel routine: portable chargers. News reports say the airline will limit passengers to one portable charger per person starting April 20, 2026, and that charger must be no larger than 100 watt-hours. (nbcnewyork.com) (msn.com) The storage rule is the part that tells you why this is happening. Southwest says portable chargers cannot go in checked luggage, and reports on the new policy say they must stay on your person or in an under-seat bag rather than in the overhead bin, where a smoking battery is harder for a flight attendant to spot fast. (southwest.com) (yahoo.com) (faa.gov) The Federal Aviation Administration has been warning airlines about this exact problem. In a safety bulletin issued in 2025, the agency said lithium batteries can ignite onboard fires and that batteries in overhead bins or carry-on bags can be obscured, hard to reach, and not readily monitored by crew members. (faa.gov) So the new Southwest trip math is simple and less generous than it used to be. A family that checks bags may pay noticeably more before boarding, and a traveler who used to toss two or three backup chargers into a backpack now has to pick one and keep it close at hand. (southwest.com) (nbcnewyork.com)
