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This month, Southwest Airlines unveiled a new cabin design thats already rolling out in new planes across its fleet. It includes slimmer seats, updated amenities, and lots and lots of blue. The new cabin was revealed on October 14, and there are currently six aircrafts in operation with the revamped design. For Southwest, this design is part of what it calls a larger transformational plan. So far, that plan has included nixing some of its most iconic brand featureslike its bags fly free policy and flat cost open seating arrangementin order to compete in an airline industry thats increasingly reliant on charging ancillary, premium fees to drive up profits. [Photo: Southwest] Starting in January 2026, Southwest will offer a new, pricier seating option that comes with extended leg room (ELR). These ELR seats are expected to take up one-third of each aircrafts total seatingand in order to implement the new tiered assigned seating process, the airline is replacing seating across its fleet. In the coming months, every new aircraft that Southwest receives from Boeing will be fitted with the fully updated cabin, while older planes will be retrofitted with new seats. According to Julia Melle, Southwests director of brand and content, the new cabin design is intended to offer new experiences for a broadening affluent consumer base, while still keeping core customers in mind. After the pandemic, we took a look at the data, and there is a more affluent audience that is growing across the category, Melle says. We wanted to be able to make sure we offered our core customers and an affluent customer more choices than ever before, and that includes an elevated experience within our cabin. [Photo: Southwest] A very blue cabin design The main change that guests might notice when they enter an updated Southwest cabin is a whole lot of blue. Throughout the customer research process, Melle says, her team found that passengers are primarily looking for a calming, relaxing, and friendly environment. To achieve that, the design team filled the cabin with an array of complimentary blue tones, from sky blue on the headrests to navy blue on the seats and a swirling, atmospheric blue on the carpet. Even the lighting scheme has been adjusted to all-blue tones. We had a red that would appear at a certain portion of the flight along with the blues, and now it’s a completely a blue color scheme, Melle says. She adds that the new lighting system also has fewer options available, simplifying the process for flight crew when theyre selecting a light setting for takeoff, cruising, and landing. [Photo: Southwest] A slimmer seat Southwests new seats are a model designed by Recaro Aircraft Seating, which faced some backlash earlier this year when internet critics nicknamed them the Ozempic seat for their skinny profiles. Melle says the seats are engineered for maximum comfort through customer feedback and product testing, from the way they maximize seat width to the specific upholstery material. Each seat comes with a personal electronic device holder on the back and a headrest that can be adjusted up and down or folded in toward the face. The new ELR seats will offer up to five inches of additional pitch for passengers to stretch out, while the seating redesign will maintain a standard seat pitch for those in economy, according to a Southwest spokesperson. To make this work in older planes, Southwest is removing six seats from its Boeing 737-700 aircraft. Boeing MAX 8 and 737-800 planes will keep the same number of seats. [Photo: Southwest] In addition to these aesthetic changes, the new cabins also include larger overhead bins, an added cupholder on tray tables, and USB-A and USB-C port on each seatback. And, for passengers sitting in the ELR tier, Southwest will now serve an exclusive new snack of either honey roasted or salted pistachios (luxurious!). Overall, the updated cabin isnt exactly reinventing the wheel. Still, for Southwest, customer reactions to the design will serve as a crucial data point for the reception of the airlines broader brand transformation.
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E-Commerce
China‘s leaders are vowing to reduce reliance on foreign advanced technology and spur stronger domestic demand as it weathers high winds amid elevated trade tensions with the U.S. An outline of the ruling Communist Party’s blueprint for the next five years was laid out in a 5,000-word communique released Thursday after a four-day top level meeting in Beijing, just days ahead of planned talks between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. Five-year plans are a throwback to the days of Soviet-style central planning. China still relies heavily on them to map out policy priorities and decide on funding. Party plenum meetings like the one held this week are also used to rally the party rank-and-file around Xi’s leadership. Thursday’s announcement signaled no major policy shifts. Despite mounting trade tensions, China intends to remain a global manufacturing power while building stronger economic growth at home. China gains confidence in the trade war The communique does not refer directly to the trade war between Beijing and Washington, but warns of rising uncertainties and unforeseen factors. Han Wenxiu, a senior party official in financial and economic policy, told reporters Friday that China is well placed to handle such risks in an era when great-power competition is becoming more complex and the international balance of power is undergoing profound adjustments. He predicted China’s strength and international status would grow in the next five years. There is always opportunity in crisis and crisis can be turned into opportunity, Han said. Chi Lo, an Asia Pacific senior market strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, said an emphasis in the communique on substantial improvements in scientific and technological self-reliance likely reflects confidence that China is less vulnerable to pressure from the trade war. The party vowed to achieve markedly stronger international influence by 2035 and to safeguard the multilateral trading system, portraying Beijing as a defender of free trade, noted Leah Fahy, a China economist at Capital Economics. Domestic economic challenges remain A downturn in the property sector that began while China was still in the midst of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic has sapped consumer confidence, reducing household wealth and leading to widespread layoffs. Chinas communique emphasized the strategic need to expand domestic demand. The government has already encouraged investment to modernize factories and paid subsidies to people who replace old appliances and vehicles with new ones. The economies of major countries are all driven by domestic demand and the market is the most scarce resource in todays world, said Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, Beijings main planning agency. But manufacturing capacity exceeds demand in many industries. That has caused damaging price wars and led companies to boost exports, adding to trade tensions with the U.S., the European Union and others. Even with strong government support, the economy grew 4.8% in the last quarter, the slowest pace in a year. Factory activity shrank for the sixth consecutive month in September, as domestic demand remained sluggish. China’s leaders have stuck to their goal of attaining the status of a mid-level developed country” and doubling the size of the economy in 2020 by 2035. That implies an average annual growth rate of about 4-5% in the next decade, said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING Bank. China will remain a manufacturing juggernaut China is the worlds biggest manufacturer, accounting for roughly 30% of global production and about a quarter of its overall economy. The new 5-year plan calls for keeping manufacturing at an appropriate level with advanced industries as the backbone. Chinas focus on the manufacturing sector “will remain a top priority, even in the face of overcapacity (and) price wars, said Fahy of Capital Economics. Over the years, Chinese manufacturing has progressed from labor-intensive, low-cost production to higher-value products including electric vehicles, robots and batteries. In coming years, the emphasis will be on advanced manufacturing, said Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley. That includes areas such as quantum technology, biomanufacturing, hydrogen and nuclear fusion energy, artificial intelligence and next-generation mobile communications, said Zheng, the planning agency chief. These industries are ready to take off, he said. It means that in the next 10 years we will build another high-tech industry in China and this will inject continued impetus to our efforts to achieve Chinese modernization. It’s unclear if China’s commitment to catalyzing more consumer spending and domestic investment will make much of a dent in its exports. Chinese companies like BYD and CATL have become global leaders in EV battery technology and production. China plays a pivotal role in global supply chains and has shown it can control access to rare earths, materials used in many products. The Chinese government sees manufacturing as a core issue in security and geopolitical leverage over other countries, added Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis. Xi continues to centralize power The four-day plenum was marked by relatively low attendance. Out of 205 full members in the elite Communist Party central committee, only 168 were there, according to the communique. Many have been purged in anti-corruption campaigns that also enforce loyalty to Xi within the party. An “unprecedented proportion of central committee members are in political trouble,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institutes Center for China Analysis. The meeting appointed Gen. Zhang Shengmin as China’s second highest ranking general. He replaced He Weidong, who was ousted from the party along with eight other senir officials in a recent anti-corruption drive. As the party continues to centralize power, the political position faced by Xi and his dominance within the party is still relatively secure said Xin Sun, a senior lecturer in Chinese and East Asian business at Kings College London. Chan Ho-Him, Huizhong Wu, and Ken Moritsugu, Associated Press Associated Press researchers Yu Bing and Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.
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E-Commerce
Snack maker Mondelez is using a new generative AI tool to cut costs for the production of marketing content by 30% to 50%, a senior executive told Reuters. The packaged food manufacturer began developing the tool last year with IT firm Accenture and expects that it will be capable of making short TV ads that would be ready to air as soon as next year’s holiday season, and potentially for the 2027 Super Bowl, said Jon Halvorson, Mondelezs global senior vice president of consumer experience. The Cadbury chocolate producer has invested more than $40 million in the tool, Halvorson said, adding that savings would grow if the tool is able to make more elaborate videos. Faced with tariffs and shrinking shopper budgets, Mondelez, like other consumer goods companies, is looking to adopt AI to slash fees paid to advertising agencies, and speed up how long it takes to develop and sell new products. Rivals such as macaroni-and-cheese maker Kraft Heinz and Coca-Cola have also been trying out AI for ads. Coke in 2024 ran AI-created holiday ads, though the computer-created people in them were ridiculed by some consumers for lacking real emotion. Mondelez is not yet putting human likenesses in its AI-created content. It is using content generated by the new tool on social media for its Chips Ahoy cookies in the U.S. and Milka chocolate in Germany. An eight-second Milka video shows waves of chocolate rippling over a wafer, along with different backgrounds depending on which consumer Mondelez is targeting. The cost to do animations “is in the hundreds of thousands,” Halvorson said. “This type of set-up is orders of magnitude smaller.” In the U.S., Oreo will use the tool for product pages on Amazon and Walmart in November. Mondelez plans to use the tool in the coming months for Lacta chocolate and Oreo in Brazil, and Cadbury in the UK, Halvorson said. Tina Vaswani, vice president of digital enablement and data for the company, said humans will always check what the tool produces to avoid any mishaps. Mondelez has rules prohibiting highlighting unhealthy eating habits, vaping, over-consumption, emotionally manipulative language and the use of offensive stereotypes, according to a document shared by the Chicago-based company. Jessica DiNapoli, Reuters
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