I got into Southwest early on because they were the only airline that allowed you to change or cancel flights with no charge via just issuing credits to your account. It took Covid for the others to come around.
1 Like
Congrats on the milestone, @dgolfman62281
1 Like
My theory is most people who don’t like SW’s boarding system have either 1) never flown on SW, or 2) flew it once and got confused, and/or 3) have status on another major domestic.
I lived in LA and SD in my 20s and early 30s but all my family was in the Bay Area, so I would be flying home 3-5 times a year. I loved Southwest because I could get a cheap flight and didn’t have to worry about having some type of status or paying more to get a window seat. Often I would be B boarding group, which was fine. I would ask if the flight was full, if it wasn’t, I would just head to a window seat in the last row and basically be insured that I wouldn’t get anyone sitting next to me. Further, my golf clubs flew for free and drinks were only $5.
Now that I have a family it was also extremely beneficial.
That trip went without a hitch. Golf clubs flew for free and I shot a nice little 79 at San Diego CC. 
I appreciate why SW is changing their system, it’s confusing for many. However, if you knew what you were doing, it was fucking wonderful.
7 Likes
Similar to me.
I’ll miss it. Usually solo travel. I prefer to board at the very end of my boarding letter group regardless my number. Walk straight to the back of the plane and grab a window seat. Easiest of them all for me.
4 Likes
Exactly, grab one more beer at the bar while all the sheep line up mindlessly.
2 Likes
CaTtLe cAlL
I always experienced significantly more gate lice with other airlines’ more traditional boarding systems.
4 Likes
Get status on a real airline.
Board first.
Have that first G&T down before you even push back.
9 Likes
That would mean I’m flying a lot more than I’d like to.
7 Likes
Most underappreciated thing about SW is how elite they are at connecting flights. You’re almost never in an aiport longer than an hour, just the right amount of time to get off, get food, go to bathroom, get back on.
Also flown with them for the last 5 years, never lost or had a damaged bag (despite checking 2 bags every time bc I hate travelling with like my carryon/backpack if I can help it), golf clubs (going on 5x trips having them), had issues boarding, people doing dumb shit on a plane, people acting like their superior. To me, unless you’ve got status elsewhere I don’t think you’ll have a better experience.
And the boarding is objectively awful everywhere, still never understand why with assigned seats the planes don’t board back to front, but alas
5 Likes
If you have to travel for work, you’re absolutely going to have some type of preferred status at a major airline and in that case SW is going to be a lower quality product.
However, in my experience, travelling on a major domestic airline without status sucks and it often feels like you’re getting nickeled and dimed.
We were flying a United 777 back from HNL last December and booked a economy tickets with my Chase points, four days out I checked our seats only to find my 2 year old daughter and my wife were in the last row of the plane and me an extremely inconvenient 20 rows up. My wife is already afraid of flying and stressed with a 2 year old. An hour on the phone and a couple hundred dollars later, we got three shitty seats together in the back of the plane. Lesson learned.
We’re likely going back to Oahu again this winter and I’m debating taking SW. However, it is nice being on a widebody for longer flights with toddlers, doing laps around the plane can distract them when a meltdown is on the horizon.
This is frealing awesome man, congrats! Sometimes you need a bit of luck to find your true calling, glad you found it!
1 Like
Yeah I fly 4x a year and still have them pay for my SW flight instead of doing delta or united. I also love the fact I can go from DC to SF with a slight stop in the middle.
I think I’ve been on about 10-15 total flights with Delta/United flights I’ve been on since 2018; at least 5x the plane was overbooked and someone had to offer up their seat. Shockingly the single person with no checked bags was always either voluntold or just volunteered after the amount they were offering went up high enough. Never seen a SW flight overbooked. Nothing used to be better than the ease of rescheduling my flight via online/app and just paying the difference, no additional fees regardless of circumstance. The days
2 Likes
Like each seat was randomly assigned, or each party? Were your seats not together? This sounds ideal for flying with my kids. Let some randos deal with their bullshit for an hour while daddy gets some sleep!
1 Like
This might be a first world problem but what a horrible first class product Delta offers on the A321 neo. Too little seat padding and very limited legroom, especially in the first row. My legs are cramped and I’m not very tall (5’9)
1 Like
The bulkhead rows are always going to be bad, but the A321 is somehow especially bad. I actually asked to not be upgraded the last flight I had on one because A something was the only seat available and I didn’t have any interest.
4 Likes
So I finally splurged on Flighty’s Pro edition amidst the last couple weeks of travel chaos, and spent a big chunk of my 3 hour ground stop delay in Charlotte manually loading in my past ~10 years of digital boarding passes from my iPhone wallet and calendar records. Not gonna lie I’m kind of mad about the cumulative time of my life that has been wasted on delays lol.
Not gonna show off the full passport just yet bc I have a lot of pre-2012 travel records I need to track down that include probably 30-50 flights, including a few long hauls to Hawaii and Germany and intra-European flights. But it’s honestly really cool to keep records of all this travel, loading up all the flights by hand was a full trek down memory lane
13 Likes
You needed a pay app to tell you that AA is the worst?
9 Likes
That I already knew lol but the cumulative numbers over time have been cool to see
1 Like
I’m actually scared to know that type of info. I get depressed seeing the 3K+ lifetime Marriott nights whenever I open the app. Don’t also need to know cumulative time sitting on planes.
3 Likes