This is Southwest's Sonos Moment

Every grown up company faces moments where they can either embrace the core customers who've been part of their success, or alienate them by chasing margin or some new CEO's brilliant strategy to grow the company.

Just like Sonos, Southwest's leadership has chosen to ignore the negative feedback, saying things like, we're doubling down on what our customers "really love about us." Even though they're actually taking those things away. (Keep saying it though, eventually people will believe it.)

What could such "trivial" changes like free bags, open seating, boarding groups, etc possibly do to brand loyalty? Not much, just like simply changing the mobile app wouldn't have any affect on Sonos, right?

In my opinion, Southwest is compromising its differentiators and more flight choices will be made on price alone - a race to the bottom.

Oh, but they're still polite and smile and have quirky in-flight announcements!? Yeah, good luck winning with that plan Sonos - oops I mean Southwest.