Southwest Airlines is joining competitors Delta andUnited Airlines in changing its frequent flier program. Travelers are probably not going to love it.

“The cost of [Southwest's Rapid Rewards frequent flier] program has risen, and we needed to increase the number of points required to manage that cost,” says Rapid Rewards director Jonathan Clarkson.

He attributes the change to “more demand for free flights and fewer open seats for redemptions (because of the growth in load factor from paying customers).”

Despite the airline’s reputation for keeping things clear, beginning April 17, 2015 it will get more complicated to redeem Rapid Rewards points for flights.

Coming in for a landing: a more complicated system for redeeming Rapid Rewards points on Southwest Airlines. (Photo credit: AP)

It’s all been so simple until now. Southwest currently calculates the number of points needed for a free ticket using a multiplier of the base airfare (before taxes and fees): 70 times the fare for the cheapest “Wanna Get Away” tickets, to 100 and 120 times respectively for “Anytime” and “Business Select” tickets.

The new change will uncouple this calculation from fares. “The number of Rapid Rewards Points needed to redeem for certain flights will vary based on destination, time, day of travel, demand, fare class, and other factors,” the airline’s website says.

Real world examples won’t be available until the new system kicks in on April 17, so we’ll all have to wait to see what exactly it means.

Southwest Airlines announced this week that it’s changing the design of its planes’ exteriors, for only the second time in its history. The company calls it “a modern new look to its iconic brand.”

I asked some design experts if they concur. The consensus: “sort of.”

The new livery (airplane-speak for the exterior design) has “a confident, clear and professional look,” says Sean Adams, president of AIGA, the professional association for design, and on the faculty of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.

“I think it is respectable,” says Debbie Millman, president & CMO of Sterling Brands and Chair of the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “It is bold and engaging. It tells a fast story. It is definitely a warmer, more friendly presentation for the brand.”

 

Southwest Airlines' New Design: LUV It Or Hate It?

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Southwest Jet with New Livery, on final approach

 

Airplane coming in for a landing at the announcement of the new livery, on September 8, 2014.

 

 

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The biggest criticism from design pros: the new look doesn’t go far enough. “I wish it were a bit more progressive and helped take corporate airline design to new places,” Millman says.

“I’m going to damn it with faint praise,” says Nathan Shedroff, Chair of the Design MBA program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, calling it a “missed opportunity” and “a safe, nice, corporate exterior. Southwest’s whole brand persona has more personality than we’re seeing on the outside of this plane.”

Here are they key elements of the new design. Click on the slide show for examples.

Typeface: The most prominent change is the treatment of the airline’s name. In place of relatively small, meh, could-be-any-company Helvetica font on the plane’s tail, big, bold lettering is emblazoned across the side of the fuselage.

“Modern and updated,” says Fridolin Beisert, associate professor and director of the Product Design Department at Art Center College.

“The upper and lower case make it easier to read quickly and friendlier,” concurs his colleague Adams.

Color scheme: Southwest’s new color scheme intensifies and repositions the blue and red stripes of the old livery and swaps out the old orange stripes for yellow. Millman calls the mix of primary colors “warm and fuzzy and appealing.”

Shedroff calls the colors “a little more lively and more colorful than before. A lot more so than United, American or Delta’s.”

“I won’t miss the planes at the airport,”says Doug Kisor, who chairs the Graphic Design Department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

Southwest’s old design is going up, up and away. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But not everyone was so positive. “They’re traditional SWA colors, but that doesn’t mean they’re any good,” says Beisert, likening them to “layers of paint from the ‘70s that I scraped off when I redid my kitchen..