Why I’m a Southwest Airlines fan (Jeff is stuck on Northwest)

How did she know you were getting nervous?

Met: she didn’t. She just was proactively helping customers. It was freaking awesome customer service.

hey, how about that? This happens to me all the time on United and Alaska. If you don’t fly them as often as you fly Southwest, of course you wouldn’t know. Neither of our experiences are indicitive of any thing common.

I’ve put something like 50,000 miles on both United and Alaska and I’ve had really negative experiences on both. You’re right, but the crowds on Southwest tell me lots of other people like their service and low prices too.

I was on a recent SWA flight from Chicago to St. Louis that was 2.5 hours delayed. On the flight, we learned that one of the attendants was heading to Vegas after the flight to start a stint on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars”. This person is a dancer that works as a flight attendant when they’re not performing. This story led to a series of jokes, requests for a dance routine in the aisles and generally raised spirits of the passengers. SWA does a great job of encouraging their people to be themselves and have fun doing their job.

Hey, Robert. On Smallbusiness.com (which is a wiki with some additional features), we have a wiki guide to airports with wifi. Anyone should feel free to add to or copy our list for any other projects like this.

Actually Robert is right. A wiki is a bad idea for this. I setup a Flickr photo group instead.

http://www.jeffsandquist.com/FindingPowerOutletsAtAirports.aspx

the interesting thing is that soutwest recently just threatened to sue several online business providing guaranteed boarding group a passes to people willing to pay a small fee — they received enough complaints from customers who couldn’t get group a — shows the power of the internet — one phx based company got screwed on the deal (which i understand is still in investigation of the legalities)

Yea, robert you could be right. Then again, I generally fly first class. Think that makes a difference?

Jeff, go back the wiki. The photos could ultimately become outdated for various reasons. I’d much rather have current info and people adding their tips, tricks and observations, correcting misinformation, etc. I don’t see how flikr really ensures the info is up to date.

Jeff has a bad hair travel day and wants to play temper-tantrum pouting blogger. Flying out from some toadsuck town to a family reunion, having a spaz and yabbing about on and on about ‘transparency’. Well, he got the part, starring role even.

And lest you think Southwest is all joy, watch ‘Airline’ on TV. Southwest and JetBlue are in a better position as they are making money, but that’s no coverall, as Southwest treats you as commodity cattle.

I always am on the volunteer bump list (free tickets ahoy) and plan ahead, travel problems are like death, taxes, and loud ranting bloggers — inevitable. Never razor thin it, esp. to odd places in North Dakota and remote parts of the 51st State.

Christopher, I’ve flown on tons of different airlines. They all are commodity cattle. I think that’s what’s neat about Southwest. They don’t even try to pretend they aren’t doing that. But then they actually take care of you better than the other carriers. Not to mention their rates are usually lower anyway.

I’m a million mile United flyer. And have probably put several hundred thousand on Delta and USAir each.

But, SWA is my favorite. They go on time and arrive on time, and they don’t bulls**t anyone.

Flying is like riding a big bus in the sky. Might as well ride on one where the people are friendly and the bus arrives on time.

Lesson learned Chris. However, if Northwest had let me know that the delay was going to be longer (and they did know it was going to be longer as they were sending 1st class passengers off to another plane). I could have gotten onto a Delta flight to Minneapolis.

I only flew once with NWA – in/out MN from London – never again. Appalling experience – bumped on confirmed booking, didn’t give a rat’s ass.

Until you have flown Air Canada, you have no experienced rude flight crews or people who don’t care. I have so many stories but they are numerous enough to crash WordPress. Last year I interviewed for a job with them and withdrew after listening to one of the job trainers talk about how bad customer service is at the airline. Odd thing is that WestJet, which is priced as a low cost competitor offers far superiour customer service and is full of people who seem to really love their jobs.

I agree with Robert’s previous comment about commodity cattle. I’ve flown own Southwest flights since the mid 80′s and they’ve never tried to BS you into thinking that you’re on the Concorde. It’s a Greyhound bus in the sky, and they make no bones about it. The shuttle flights (short hop, turn around and go back) are awesome. I had one from Vegas to Austin where the pilot came on the intercom, apologized in advance for a rough flight because he was running a little late, and promised to get us there on time, by golly he did.
And for anybody that thinks Southwest is crappy, try flying America West…..

Oh so they are to be applauded for recognizing that you are in fact commodity cattle? My my, how low has customer service sank in that industry, when you start to praise mere acknowledgements of mediocrity.

Too bad SWA doesn’t fly to Minneapolis. I would fly them in a second if they did. Sadly, stuck with NWA most of the time.

Some of us here in Minnesota are secretly praying for NWA to go belly up so that MPLS can become competitive again. Of course, half the airport will probably be deserted if that happens, costing lots of jobs…

I read this a few hours before flying on a Southwest flight from Salt Lake to Cleveland. My flight got delayed, and was scheduled to land 5 minutes before my connecting flight left. The gate attendant who was scanning the boarding passes noticed this while I was was boarding the plane had another employee look for other options. I got pulled off the plane and put on another flight that so that I would make it to Cleveland on time. Any other airline would have had me fly to the connection city, miss the flight, and figure it out from there. I don’t mind being cattle when they look out for you so well.

Ok…I’m really not digging the whole “cattle” or “bus” references to our airline but I am digging the Customer Service stories. Just goes to prove what happens when a Company hires for attitude and puts its employees first…happy employees translates to excellent service. I’m guessing WestJet also has good employee relations as well.

As far as this statement from your post:
“It’s weird, but the people who interact with the customers at Southwest are just a lot more interesting than their blog makes them out to be.”

Are you saying we’re not doing a good job of showing our Employee’s personality on the blog?

Angela (Southwest Blog Chic)

The real diff in seating on our airline versus the other guys is that on Southwest you still have a chance to get a good seat even if you bought your ticket at the last minute. Simply wait in line. On the other airlines you already know that your seat assignment “sucked” when you bought the ticket months in advance.

I was on a Southwest flight to Canada. Not only were they late but they landed in a completely different city! Then we had to wait for hours on a bus to take us across snow & icy roads. It was 4 o’clock in the morning (candian time) before we reached our destination.I will never fly SW again!!!

SWN to Canada? When did that start?

I love SWN. I haven’t had any wonderful CSR experiences, just ontime flight from a company with the right attitude!

Yeah!…

Southwest Airlines is known for their great costumer attention…

I read that its one of the company’s priority and they even train their staff on how to just do that!

Jonathan Lewis
Webmaster
http://GuideToCheapAirlineTickets.useful-tips.com/