I mean it’s not like anyone reasonably expects the CEO is out there replacing driver files and rebooting devices from safe mode. He’s probably got mtgs with Air France/KLM on the side too. More likely he is listening to their complaints about cross-listed flights being fucked up.
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A change for the better if you ask me.
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Yeah, my twitter timeline is generally people freaking out about this, which I don’t really understand. I’m happy with it. It’s obnoxious travelling with a whole family, and I hate the cattle call boarding and subtle pressures that go along with the board process. And I would much rather pay the $25 I do for early boarding to get a seat that I can pick ahead of time.
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As with many changes, it’s a mixed bag. For a certain type of traveller, the SW cattle call worked fine. Mostly solo business travelers. When I fly by myself, I’m happy to use Southwest - a good thing since I’m in Phoenix and it’s the easiest option most of the time.
But I don’t love it when flying with my family. For all that I appreciate free bags and typically low fares the boarding thing just stresses my wife out. It doesn’t bother me, I’m good at getting online and getting a number, or I figure we can buy the early boarding pass and still come out cheaper than most AA flights and have no fear we’ll all be sitting together. But it’s the rare case where her anxiety wins out over her frugality.
I suspect that’s the case for a lot of family travel so you’re not just upping your earning potential by neing able to sell seats but you’re very probably expanding your customer base.
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I did an internship with Southwest a number of years ago - as a result I was on a lot of WN flights. It always shocked me how every single time I was in the queue to board or boarding there was always someone who was very confused that they did not have an assigned seat. So many older couples arguing with each other about where they were supposed to sit.
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I’m leaning towards liking this change. Honestly, the cattle call opened the door for more gate lice to hover around then since the vid, pre-boards + seat saving has been a pain as well. Starting to travel more for work, so I’m working to accrue points/miles more through United though since they’re paying for it, but SW will still be my go to for personal travel. Especially since MDW is easier to get to than ORD these days.
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tend to agree with @jandywlu that this is a little overblown. is he supposed to be in the ATL terminal sorting lost bags?
He left the day things go back under control. Also took a delta flight. Didn’t fly private. Has a job to do.
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I hope there’s lots of video of the first flight this gets implemented on just to see how many on board fights there’s gonna be.
RIP Jerry Springer.
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It makes sense, especially the premium econ seating which I assume will be geared toward A-list/preferred. I hope they can really dial in the boarding process and just switch from numbers to board by row, it would be so much faster that way.
Anyone else tryna fly into DCA this afternoon and getting hit with an indefinite ground stoppage for bad weather south of dc?
Looked at the weather radar and let’s just say it should be pretty easy to avoid the handful of thunderstorms floating around, so I’m not totally buying the weather related ground stoppage for checks watch going on 2 hours
Update, sat on the tarmac for 2 hours in Charlotte waiting for DCA to end this alleged ground stall and had to dump us back in the terminal. I’ve been on work trips for 2 weeks and I’m just ready to be home at this point.
Edit to add: they dumped us at C16, and at C14 is another AA flight to DCA due to start boarding in 15 min. These gates are basically on top of each other and the terminal is mobbed. Totally guaranteed to cause a shitshow of boarding and re-boarding confusion.
Please update with video.
DCA is for all intents and purposes a single runway airport. Plus the convection is just enough that it screws with departure and arrival routes. Despite being only 30 miles from IAD, the two airports have separate arrival and departure routes for each airport, and with the complexity of DC airspace, there isn’t much room to deviate around those cells.
CLT is close enough to DCA that when EDCTs need to be published, they’ll get picked on worse than if you were flying in from further away.
It sucks, but that’s aviation life on the east coast, not much wiggle room to handle minor enroute thunderstorms.
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I’ve flown SW forever since it was my dad’s airline back when he was traveling a lot for work. The open seating was never weird for me since I’ve always known that system. Flying with wife and kids has made me appreciate Family Boarding (after A group) and free checked bags was always awesome - well worth the bits of social awkwardness that never got under my skin. I’m hopeful total prices won’t be changing for infrequent flyers like me.
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I have never flown Southwest, their boarding sounds like the airline version of riding the bus. No thank you.
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If you know how to work the system, it’s not bad. Simple and convenient for short hops here on the left coast.
That being said, I only fly LUV to Vegas. Otherwise it’s team AA for me.
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We frequent Southwest out here on the west coast when can get a direct flight. They are usually cheaper than just about everything else when flying within CA, or to Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake, etc. and if you are going to fly less then 2 hours, we can handle it. You know what you get. The free bags with kids crap helps too. They also have so many flights out here that if anything happens to your flight, there are tons of options.
If there are no direct flights, I am out and flying something else.
More like commuter Amtrak. Spirit is the Greyhound. Allegiant is Mega Bus.
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It’s a Facebook post, so my apologies if you don’t have an account. Just celebrating a personal milestone today:
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Disgusting. My wife was horrified that I booked 1 hour flights the other week that just had random assigned seating(was literally 1/2 the points) and not selected seating so while I’m fascinated I don’t think I will ever experience this without being murdered