Recently I had to fly to the Northwest of the US. Unfortunately the only flights out and back were on 2 carriers that I had never been on before. The first was Southwest, over all not to much to complain on but the main point I hated was their seating policy. Yeah it may be ok for the average size person, but if you are anything over 5’5″ it sucks. Being 6’5″ makes it extremely hard to sit in one of their seats for 3+ hours with some one elses seat in your knees. It also means that if you aren’t up ad the crack of dawn to “check in” online you get a bad seat. What makes this worse is that if you have multiple connections, you are SOL. I had to go through 2 airports to get to the final destination. Southwest has a policy that you can only have 2 Boarding cards at once. What they don’t tell you, is that you can only get the first one on line. The web site will refuse to let you print the other ones, until after you have flown the first flight. Which means the 2nd and 3rd flights you are stuck with the really bad seats. In fact, after I had flown the first flight they still would not print out the boarding card for the last flight. I ended up having to wait in line to get a card while the rest of the flight boarded. Only thing that lucked out on the final flight was that I got an exit row sit, even though it was a middle seat, it at least had more leg room.
Some observations of the flights, they like to taxi a little faster than most other carriers do. They seem to hit the runway a little faster and harder than most others do as well. After talking to some people it seems this is how they get their good on time rating. Other than that, they seemed to be ok. They even checked my bags through for me on the weird ass path I had to go through which was nice.
Next up is Northwest (or Delta?). My trip back was supposed to leave at 105PST. But about 30 minutes before our board time they changed it to 230PST. You should have seen the gate area. Every one was running up to the desk to try to get their tickets changed. The suck part was that for me, the only way I could get home if the flight didn’t go was to wait another day. So they then come on the loud speaker and said that the Pilot talked to the ATC and we were going to start boarding, Yeah!. But that was short lasted, we ended up setting on the taxiway for about 30 to 50 minutes waiting on a clearance to leave. Needless to say there were a bunch of pissed people. (I saw the guy across from me go through like 4 beers in a 30 minute period). So we get close to the airport and we are told to slow down and start circling because of weather and runway problems. (Don’t go through MSP if you can help it till they get their construction stuff done.) Needless to say we landed and I had 3 minutes to go from Gate C1 to C21, which is a hefty walk. By the time I get there the board still says the flight is on time and will be leaving at 720CST. So I ran to the desk and found out that the crew hadn’t even showed up yet. Great, at least I should make it home. But the crew showed up like 30 minutes late, and we were late leaving, which meant we were really late arriving. And then a 1.5 hour drive home.
I think that the airline industry has cut back to much on their staff, such that they can’t even get their own crews to the gates on time. The other thing is that if they know there is so many problems in MSP, why do they scheduled flights so close. Course it is probably not their fault but more of the travel agency’s.
But the “best” thing I saw yesterday, and I wish I had my camera in video mode shooting it, was when a baggage tosser was kneeling on top of a bag coming out of under a 737 from Delta that had just landed. He rode it half way down the belt and then stood up and acted like he was surfing. No wonder people’s bags are destroyed so much.