joining us live to break it all down, consumer travel reporter at the new york times, christine chungchristine, thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> i saw you wrote a whole article about this in the new york times. so i got to ask you, why is southwest, after some 50 years of doing this? and correct me if i'm wrong, but i think they're kind of the only major airline doing this with the open seating after all this time. why the change? >> yeah, they did have this policy for more than 50 years, and it's something that they have really been proud of and said differentiated them from that of other airlines, it seems like they're making these changes for a number of reasons. the biggest one being that they're really struggling financially lately, this is a bid to increase revenue, they need the cash bad, the other thing they say is that this is in part a response to what passengers reportedly want. they said some 80% of customers that they surveyed said that they actually supported this change. >> okay. so let's dive a little more deeply into this. right? 80% of the custom

new york times reporter christine chung wrote about the changes and talked with us on abc seven newsthree today. >> it seems like they're making these changes for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that they're really struggling financially lately, this is a bid to increase revenue. they need the cash back. >> chung says she does not believe the airline will end its free checked bag policy. the new seating is set to go into effect next year. >> coming up next, the abc7 news i-team tracks down a swim team president arrested for embezzlement. see what the team is having to do to stay afloat. plus what we're doing is digging out of a 50 year hole. >> how did we get here? that 50 year hole. tonight we continue to look at what it takes to build a better bay dave's company just scored the comcast business 5-year price lock guarantee. high five! high five... -i'm on a call. it's 5 years of reliable, gig speed internet... five years of advanced security... five years of a great rate that won't change. yep, dave's feeling it. yes. but it's only for a limited time. five years? -five ye