I traveled over the holidays, coming back home the afternoon after Winter Storm Hercules cleared out. My return flight was a two-legger, starting at a medium-sized airport in New England.
That airport is served by Southwest and a couple of the legacy carriers. That afternoon, the legacy carriers weren't flying at all. But SWA was, doing their best to move people. Oh, they were struggling, for they had to cobble together pick-up crews from incoming flights to get flights out. At the hub, SWA held my connecting flight for my incoming flight and another one. Upshot was I got home less than two hours late, which, given the near chaos that was going on, was close enough to "on-time" to suit me.
Now, with Winter Storm Ion pounding the Midwest and heading east, it's probably a reasonable guess that if I had flown on the legacy carriers, I'd still be back in New England and likely stuck there until the middle of the week.
The other thing is that in the midst of the zoo-like conditions, everyone working for SWA kept their good humor. And as a likely result, so did almost all of the passengers.* There was none of the "slaughterhouse squeeze chute" atmosphere that I've experienced on other carriers.**
Years ago, I was skeptical of SWA, I thought they were too good to be true. But with no baggage fees, no ticket-change fees, no second-rate feeder airlines and good customer service, if it's not SWA, I'm not going unless I'm getting paid for the trip.***
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* There was one little self-important loudmouth with a Southie accent, who seemed to take it all personally. Fuck him.
** UAL and Delta in the last few years. Haven't flown AA/USAir recently, but I've been told they're worse.
*** Jet Blue doesn't fly where I need to go.
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7 comments:
There is so much wisdom in this - not to mention the pleasure of sitting in a 737 instead of an RJ.
I find SWA to be very forthcoming with their charges too, unlike Spirit and such. You want to get a low number, pay $10 and they'll check you in as early as possible...it's not fool-proof, but I've jumpseated on a number of SWA flights over the years and still trust them to do exactly what I need then to do if I explain what I need. Need a rapid descent to squeeze the SWA 737 between a couple of other flights, explain and they'll do it cheerfully. SWA is still a lot of controllers favorite airline.
Actually, I'm flying a lot of Delta of late and the service has been excellent. I'm pretty happy with how I've been treated and have no complaints...
All The Best,
Frank W. James
These folks have my loyalty.
When my wife passed away in September, I called WN to cancel a trip we had planned. I asked if the funds for her tickets could be transferred to me for future use (their usual practice). The young man said "We have no need to profit from your tragedy, simply send a copy of the death certificate and wee'll refund everything." I did, they did. Nuf said.
Bear
Frank, I've got to agree with you. We got caught in Albany, and United/Continental (which is really beginning to look like plain old crappy Continental, despite "assurances") managed to get us out to MSP, through a 25 minute transfer across the terminal and into our seats bound for LA. Minus our bags, which we delivered later to our door.
Being of the Plus-sized folks, SWA is not a good fir, ha ha, but I like their style.
Happy New Year, all!
Bad Yogi, my experience on SWA is that when they hold a flight for a connection, they also hold it long enough to transfer the checked bags. On an earlier trip, when I was sitting on a 737 at MDW and waiting because they were holding for an incoming connection, the pilot said that they would stay long enough to transfer the luggage because "it's no fun getting there without your stuff."
Yeah, in general I've seen that both on SWA and JetBlue, and longer ago on the legacies. (I generally don't book with less than 90 minutes between flights, but this was different.) In any case, Delta had my bags back to me same day, no cost, which is as it should be.
With the ice-terfuck we were all dealing with, I don't know how long it would have taken to transfer bags as well. Probably long enough to miss the take-off window.
The bigger problem is that every couple of years we go through this as if it had never happened before. Seriously, WTF?
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