This is going to sound like an ad, but I exclusively fly SW domestically. As noted, they used to look like a worse value but only because of the way competition handled fees. Couple this with the standard rewards program and I think SW is a steal. Did you know that SW is also the only domestic airline to have never filed bankruptcy? I’m glad to see the rest of the world being forced to compete more honestly. I’m sad to see that my convenient flights might get a little more crowded, but oh well!
Southwest is my favorite airline for domestic US travel. Two free checked bags by default is amazing. I also personally like the no assigned seats, and no first class.
I also had an experience with a delayed bag once, which took about an hour to come out on the carousel. It was long enough that I went to the help desk to get help and potentially report the bag as lost. I got a 300 dollar travel credit, and my bag turned up shortly after.
> You may contact us for a refund of the cost of additional seating after travel. If you prefer not to purchase an additional seat in advance , you have the option of purchasing just one seat and then discussing your seating needs with the Customer Service Agent at the departure gate. If it’s determined that a second (or third) seat is needed, you’ll be accommodated with a complimentary additional seat.
I never flew SW, can you or someone explain what the problem is with unassigned seats (what makes it a zoo)? I've used long distance trains and buses and it has been fine.
They don't charge extra for assigned seats. Instead, you pick your seat by sitting in it. Which means you need to board earlier. Boarding order is assigned by the order in which you check in. To do that, you get the Southwest app and check in the moment the notification pops up on your phone. If you do that, you board ahead of everyone else. Free of charge.
If you believe paying paying extra fees for every little thing constitutes order over chaos, well then maybe you should fly another airline and pay their fees. Personally I prefer Southwest's up-front pricing model. I just tap the check-in button when it pops up on my phone and board ahead of everyone else, thus avoiding the so-called zoo of people at the back who haven't figured it out yet.
The first time I flew Southwest I immediately saw that boarding first gets you a better seat. So I asked them, how do you board first? And they told me. I boarded first from then on.
You're already behind if you're hitting the check-in button because of how connecting flights work. Passengers can check in 24h ahead of the earliest flight on their ticket, which is >24h ahead of the flight you're on. It's usually not a problem being A20 vs A15, but it can be much worse if you're joining the last leg of a popular connection.
How do they enforce that people who checked in earlier get to board earlier? Almost every other airline has "groups" where in theory, Group 1 boards while everyone else waits, then Group 1&2 are invited, and so on. But in reality, everyone just dogpiles the gate when Group 1 starts, regardless of their group, and nobody actually checks the group number or enforces anything.
They create a single-file queue, with what is supposed to be a strict linear sorting. Instead of a group, you get a boarding number from A1 through C60. There's some flexibility in this, generally most people don't mind #44 going before #40, but you won't be able to line up or board after person #11 if your boarding card says #56. The gate agent will make you go to your correct place in line. Since it's a single-aisle plane, they run everyone through a single ticket reader, and thus have a point of enforcement.
Yes, and they also have these pylons next to the gate, with numbers on them that are for forming the line. During boarding, everyone stands next to the pylon with their number on it and thus the line is formed. Southwest gates are unusual in this way. No other airline has these pylons at their gates.
I remember one gate agent who was unusually vocal about everyone obeying the rules. It was pretty funny actually.
How does that work for people traveling in groups such as couples or families? The reason that airlines have assigned seating is that people want to know before they get on the plane that they’ll be seated together.
Especially for families you don’t want your kid sitting next to some random person because you missed a notification on an app and ended up boarding last when only middle seats are left
If you board in later groups (i.e. not one of the first 100 or so people) you are essentially stuck waiting in a line in a cramped isle for people to put their bags up and are likely to be relegated to a middle seat.
Though that does presume being ready to board at precisely that moment while traveling with small children. In my experience I can expect that to happen about half the time.
If you are clearly a family, and miss family boarding, I believe they'll let you board whenever you're ready. As long as you get on sometime in the "B" group, you should find an empty row or two at the back of the plane.
Nothing forces them to charge extra for seat assignments!
There are still a couple that include free seat assignments (within your booking class, and without introducing a fake "basic economy" class without assigned seats), and that's by far my preferred seating model.
I almost always fly SW, and it's my least favorite flying experience. Why do I fly it often then? It's not the cost, I am rarely paying out of pocket for the flights, as they're typically work related. It's just simple - they are my only option for direct flights for most of the travel I do that doesn't involve me driving 2 extra hours to go to the larger LAX airport.
Might be the case in some parts of the US, but Delta and sometimes Alaska tend to be price competitive with SW, and the flying experience is leagues better (imo).
Best perk on SW is the companion pass. Some well timed credit card sign ups and a few flights and you can have a companion fly free with you for almost 2 years. Especially nice as SW flies to Hawaii.
Credit card sign up and spend count towards earning the pass, one trick make a large tax payment with your cards to boost the points earned. Worth the fees you will pay.
For the domestic airline, no that's not true, theres other airlines in the USA that have not declared bankruptcy, off the top of my head Alaska Airlines never has alongside several others. this seems to be a great, yet sadly non-exhaustive list: https://www.airlines.org/dataset/u-s-bankruptcies-and-servic...
I look at Southwest as an outlier, I don't mind them, but I don't really look for them, they used to fly to inconvinent airports.
I have a SW story that has made me dedicate my business to them moving forward:
I had a trip to Austin where i was mid-flight when they cancelled all flights there a year or so ago. I was headed to Sacramento as a connection from PDX and when I landed I went to gate agent to let them know and they were already befuddled by other customers as everything east of colorado at that point was a mess, somehow though they found flights that would get me to Austin later that day that had not been cancelled as the forecast was to thaw, and all seemed good. Luckily i had only a carry on so no baggage worries. I just had to get to SNA then off to Austin. So i took the flight, with free drinks and internet now, to SNA and I land and cancelled again in mid air. So I'm thinking what the heck now. I get with the agent who was very understanding and we found a path to go see my parents instead in AZ (i figured since i was this far and hadn't seen them in a few years at their city might as well). They let me divert my destination for no charge, I did have to fly back up to San Jose and then from there to PHX. It was my longest domestic travel experience ever (5am-4pm) but every step the flight attendants, the pilots, the gate agents, everyone was awesome. After SNA I got free drinks, internet, and in the first boarding group from there. I somehow made it to PHX before 4pm. I was blown away at the compassion shown and the respect given even after some passengers blew up at some of these folks. They reset with me and I showed them a modicum of respect and they helped me out immensely. Thier people at every stop seemed to really enjoy their job when dealing with decent passengers and even the not so decent ones they owuld put up with and move along with a smile.
“As noted, they used to look like a worse value but only because of the way competition handled fees.”
They have consistently been by far the worse value from either of the airports in my area even after paying additional fees on other airlines such as checked baggage fees.
> but only because of the way competition handled fees
Southwest treats all its customers the way the big three treat their most frequent fliers. I am loyal to Delta and also never pay baggage fees or change fees or have miles expire. The lounges are free, which means free food and drink from one airport to the other. I can get a human on the phone within 60s, have had a car help with gate-to-gate transfers when a delay (not my fault) caused a close call while I was flying with a pet and had them help when I needed to fly back from Mexico without my (stolen) passport. For those privileges, I spend five figures with them a year and quite a bit more on their branded credit card.
My mom flew Delta recently. Despite me booking her into a quite-nice set (albeit not front-cabin, my bad), she had an atrocious--almost condescending--experience all the way through. Surprise fees on check-in. No help at the gate. Expensive restaurants or fast food in the terminals, nothing in between. (Granted, the advantages of Delta having never lost one of my bags nor cancelled a flight for bewildering reasons extended to her.)
Going forward, if I weren't buying a front-cabin ticket for her, I'd try to have her fly Southwest.
Southwest has its faults, but they're far and away the most human-friendly and least-BS domestic airline in the US. The price is the price and you get reasonable accommodations even at the base fare. If your Southwest credits/vouchers expire, you can talk to an actual person who'll extend it by six months after expiration even if you don't have status. It doesn't feel bad giving Southwest your business.
Maybe other companies shouldn't completely optimize away the humanity in their services. Maybe have some core values beyond "make number go up."
> Maybe other companies shouldn't completely optimize away the humanity in their services
Plenty of fliers just want the cheapest flight. (Some, like me, see longer flights as mini in-day vacations.) Having a competitive market means we get to have both: a cheap, inhuman option; a mid-priced human option; and a high-priced, human and luxurious one.
This 1000%. It’s even more true and viable in any industry saturated with competition that is married to the opposite standards. Yet here I am, simply baffled that someone else tried to argue that not having declared bankruptcy before could be a bad thing.
Any “boarding upgrade” on Southwest is contingent on you being present early in the boarding process and scrambling for a good seat. If you get to the gate just before departure, your “upgrade” is worthless.
On other airlines you have an assigned seat, so you can just sit in the airport and board last if you want and you still have your seat. This matters if you are running late one day. It also means you have to allow extra time when flying Southwest, as you can’t use the boarding time as buffer time, at least not if you care what seat you’re in.
Other than garbage airlines like Frontier, I have never had reasons to complain about any American airlines that much. Competition is so fierce that they all are pretty bad in my opinion.
My United Tariff is up to $400. That is, I add $400 to whatever their price is when I'm shopping for tickets. That's how much more I'm willing to pay anyone else to avoid flying United.
What is the signal being derived never having declared bankruptcy? Doesn't that mean, comparatively, they're extracting more money from customers than the rest of the industry and spending less on things like maintenance? Both of those sound like bad things to me.
If you buy a plane ticket for the future, in a bankruptcy, you become an unsecured creditor of the airline.
That means the airline could have taken your money, spent it, and the bankruptcy court can say that they don't actually have to honor your ticket because it falls below the line of the things the airline has money to actually pay people back for. And then you have to go buy another ticket on another airline.
> If you buy a plane ticket for the future, in a bankruptcy, you become an unsecured creditor of the airline.
Unless you pay for it with a credit or debit card, which probably accounts for pretty much every ticket sold in the US.
In other words, this is simply not true. The airline's acquiring bank bears the bulk of the risk for almost all flights (except for those purchased extremely far out, i.e. much more than a year, and some other edge cases).
Even worse, you can get caught with no return flight. In late 2001, I was flying back home to Dallas from Prague, connecting in Brussels. And the airline I was on, Sabena, declared bankruptcy the very day of the flights.
I got lucky, if your flight left before 8am you were rebooked on a different airline. After 8? You were out of luck and on your own. My flight had been scheduled for 7:50.
Balance that with no change fees, free bags, companion pass, and flight credits that do not expire.
When I travelled a lot, I would fly Southwest the first part of the year to earn the companion pass. Once earned I would fly Delta or United, who ever was cheaper.
As a consumer it is nice to have a choice and competition. Seems like the other large carriers raise fees and degrade the travel experience in tandem.
> Balance that with no change fees, free bags, companion pass, and flight credits that do not expire
Delta provides each of those at its higher frequent-flier levels. Plus free food and drink at the airport and in the air, premium seats, et cetera. If you're a very frequent flier, the majors have a better product. If you're a middlingly-frequent flier, or someone who flies a short, cheap route frequently, Southwest.
