(Insert airline here) sucks running thread

I’ve somehow never flown Southwest, but have heard from many who definitely agree with you. My pop was a big fan.

 

The callback finally worked. Problem solved. The lady who helped me could not have been nicer. She said many employees were given 90-day leaves in May and have not yet been called back to work. They expect that will change soon and they will finally be fully staffed.

Time for many beers.

 

I’m glad SW finally stopped serving peanuts.

 

US airlines -- another thing I don't miss being overseas. The majors all seem aggressively mediocre, and the ones I hear good things about (Alaskan, JetBlue) don't tend to fly where I need to go. Haven't flown Southwest since 2012 or so, but I don't remember having any complaints.

 

I want to love Southwest, but in my market, there are never decent prices. Jetblue is good. I try to avoid American as much as I can, which basically leaves Delta. But we go for price usually, with flight times a close second.

 

I'm still waiting.

I cancelled all my reporting trips the first week of March. I'll try to do my work for the rest of this year based on reporting I've already done.

Not sure when I'll get back on a plane.

Our large domestic carriers are interchangeably indifferent/bad. JetBlue and Southwest are idiosyncratically OK if they fly where you need to go.

Generally, big legacy European operators like Lufthansa are great, and discount outfits like Ryan Air or Easy Jet are pretty bad. Wow and Vueling are/were OK. Always check to see if your discount Euro carrier has gone bankrupt the morning of travel.

The whole travel day experience has long been a series of small punishments. Now it's an airborne Petri dish / Roulette wheel.

 

I think I got lucky with United last year. My flight home from Heathrow was supposed to be at 12:30 and it got pushed back to 1:45. They offered to put me on a 7:30 a.m. flight for no charge, so I decided to go that route. Sure, I was getting on the tube at 4 a.m., but I was also back home from Dulles in time to belly up to the bar and watch college football. And the plane was empty and I had a row to myself so I slept for the first four hours of the trip. It was great.

 

I've flown about 1.75 million miles on Delta and 700,000ish on American. That's a decent amount of loyalty, and though the comp upgrades and lounge access has been nice, there have been times when all those miles haven't meant a damn thing. I'm at the airport and can't get an earlier flight, which has 30 empty seats, for what reason? They'll make all the exceptions in the world when it benefits them. This has been one of the best parts of retirement -- not having to hear someone with TSA yell, "Feet on the yellow markers!"

 

When I was in Vegas in mid March when the shit hit the fan and had to travel home four days early I went on Southwest’s website and had my flight changed in five minutes. And this was on March 15 when the world was melting down.

 

Same. I cancelled a bunch of trips the week of March 1, and Southwest was by far the easiest.