I just had a rough few days dealing with a death in the family and got quite a “good, bad, and ugly” view of the airline industry as a result. The destination was Florida and relatives were coming in from seven states in the U.S. and Canada, with their last-minute fares ranging from $280 to $1,200. My family flew on Southwest and things went flawlessly from start to finish. The others? It wasn’t pretty.
Here’s why Southwest makes almost every other airline look like a bunch of bumbling idiots.
1) We called on the phone to sort things out – no extra charge of course. A real human, a native English speaker based in the U.S., answered in less than a minute. (Thanks Bridgette!)
2) My wife had a ticket on Southwest for her and our daughter for a week later, bought for $120 each. Southwest let us switch both to an immediate departure for…nothing. No extra charges, delivered with a smile.
3) I had just received a Rapid Rewards free flight voucher from Southwest a few days earlier in my e-mail. “Yes, of course you can use that for a departure tomorrow Mr. Leffel. What time would you like to leave?” I think the sky will be filled with flapping hogs before I hear those words from a legacy airline.
4) All our flights left on time and landed on time.
5) Our checked luggage arrived.
6) Everyone’s carry on luggage fit in the overhead bins.
7) The staffers were all pleasant and cheerful.
I won’t talk about the experiences of my friends and relatives who came on USAir, Northwest, and Delta. You’ve read plenty in the papers already. On most counts, it was the opposite of the above.
Chris Elliott once noted in his column that travel industry writers expend much more ink on airlines than they do on hotels and rental cars. I would say there’s nothing unusual about that at all: airlines just manage to make us angry and frustrated more often than the other two added together, so we vent. It’s a story when they don’t screw up. When your spouse says, “How was your flight?” and you can actually reply with, “Fine, uneventful, no problems at all.”
That’s a nice feeling. And unfortunately, a rare one. In my experience, it’s less rare on Southwest than the others, and that’s worth the loyalty they inspire, even among business travelers who have the budget to fly with anyone.
