Travelers can look forward to purchasing tickets for Southwest Airlines’ new premium seats starting late next year, CEO Bob Jordan said Thursday.

“Sales of the new products will occur in the half of 2025 and operations of the new products in the first half of 2026, all of this is on track,” he said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference.

The new seats with more legroom are part of a larger redesign of Southwest’s product that will see the company abandon its open, egalitarian model to which it attributes much of its success over the past 50 years. Other changes include assigned seating, red-eye flights and international partnerships, the first of which will be with Icelandair.

The changes follow pressure from an activist investor, Elliott Management, to get Southwest to improve its financial performance. The new products and flights are expected to bring the airline billions of dollars in new revenue in the coming years.

Southwest is investing “hundreds of millions” of dollars in new premium seats with more legroom and other changes, Jordan said. The work includes updating more than 60 of Southwest’s technology systems to sell the new products and securing Federal Aviation Administration approval of the new seats.

The changes are not without risk. The airline has built its brand around its unique product and business and risks alienating some customers as its offerings edge ever closer to those of other major U.S. airlines.

“It won’t change us or the values ​​we stand for,” Jordan said. “It significantly changes the product we offer our customers.”

Southwest is far from alone in updating its product. Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines are all making similar moves in response to increased consumer demand for more premium travel products. Next year, budget airline Frontier plans to introduce new first-class seats and JetBlue plans to introduce its first airport lounges. Spirit plans further product changes as part of its bankruptcy restructuring.

As for Southwest, travelers can look forward to seeing the new seats onboard flights sometime in early 2025 — and enjoying the extra legroom for free. The airline plans to fly the updated product before it begins sales in order to introduce it to a critical mass of aircraft.