Southwest Airlines

My wife and I fly Southwest whenever possible. We love your online app for reservations, check in, bags, (2), fly free, no hassle boarding, and your friendly personnel. Your fleet of 737’s is always clean and ready for us to board and your inflight staff in my opinion is the best there is. I’ve flown a few other carriers when necessary, and they all come up short when compared to Southwest. Now for a suggestion, there are two busy little airports, Chattanooga and Tri-Cities, (near Johnson City, TN). When you can, I think that if you could put a few flights or so into those airports a day, those other airlines mentioned above would most certainly surrender most if not all of their clientele to Southwest. I know about things like this. I wrote the sales and marketing plan for Apple Computer for their K-12 market. We went from less than a billion dollars in that division to over 10 billion in seven short years. We just changed the how we marketed and sold into that market place and boom! There you go. Hit them from your ATL, DET, Midway, and Baltimore hubs. Bundle some of you vacation packages or special rates to Las Vegas, Orlando, SoCal, Denver and now you have a problem on your hands, not enough capacity. But with plenty word of mouth marketing to go along with your clever ad campaign. A winning combination. That’s a good problem! Anyway, see you tomorrow. Bryan Chism

I have had A-List Preferred for the past 5 years with the vast majority of my experiences incredibly positive with one exception. My son traveled with family friends to Fort Lauderdale late July for a week at the beach and golf. For starters, his golf bag was sent to the west coast instead of Ft. Lauderdale arriving 2 days late and incredibly damaged - 4 golf clubs had the heads snapped off including a driver, 2 fairway woods, and a pitching wedge. The driver and fairway wood heads were smashed/dented and impossible to repair. The golf bag had both legs snapped off and damaged beyond repair. The Club Glove protective insert was snapped and the Club Glove travel bag was severely damaged including a buckle snapped entirely off the strap and the protective backing torn from the material. Bottom line, the golf bag was run over by either a baggage transporter or a large heavy piece of equipment. All in all about $1,200-$1,500 in total damage. I filed a claim with Southwest and was assured it would be expedited and I would be reached out to inside two weeks - not the case. Needless to say I am in need of tracking this down instead of proactive reach out to a loyal client who travels 65+ times per year, a Southwest Visa cardholder, and Companion Pass holder for 5+ years. My star rating is a 1 based on this experience. I am very satisfied outside of this experience but question whether or not I should use Southwest when traveling with a golf bag.

We have been traveling on Southwest as a family for over 35 years! We love Southwest because the staff is always friendly, they are helpful and answer quickly when you call in, the flight attendants gave us champagne on our honeymoon in 1989, you can cancel or make changes on a reservation without it being a major trauma and without any additional fees, they fly where we want to fly and last, but not least we can have two free checked bags and carryons. For years you could change or cancel a ticket and put the points back in your family points bank and we lived that especially when our kids were in college. Now you can’t, but that is because of the federal government and not because of Southwest. They fought it and lost. Also, I know several Southwest employees and they love their jobs. I love flying with an airline that treats not only their customers, but also their employees well. Now we have booked our 30th anniversary trip to Hawaii so that my husband can complete his 50th state. I will finish my 50th in September when we fly Southwest back east to Hartford, Connecticut to then go on to Vermont. Many of those states we have reached by flying Southwest! We also love that you all love our country! Thanks for all you do to make this world a better place! Blessings, Suzanne and John Barslund

Southwest is my favorite airline but I do have a complaint about my last trip from Boston to New Orleans with a connecting fight at Midway. The Plane landed at Midway on time but there was no gate available so we sat on the runway for awhile before being sent to a makeshift gate with no lounge area as far away as possible from my connecting flight which several other passengers were also booked on. In the past when there were delays and long distances between gates the flight crew always allowed connecting passengers off first. I was seated in the back so it took a long time to get off. I am in my 70’s with knee arthritis and cannot run. All signs on the long walk indicated my next flight was on time so I tried to run which is near impossible for me. When I finally got to gate no one was in line to board and it was just 5 minutes to departure. I thought I missed the flight only to find out it was delayed for more than 30 minutes. Signage had not been updated to alert me on the way. Had I been in my 20’s running to the gate would not have been a problem but a little care and planning by your crews could have helped. Please let connecting passengers of the plane first!

I’m not a frequent flyer, I probably use an airline 2 or 3 times a year on vacations with my family. We usually fly on one of the major airlines, Southwest has always been the best. They are right there to help if you need any assistance. They have a real smile on their faces and it just seems to be a relaxing flight to your destination. Some of the other airlines have been alright as well , Jet Blue and Delta would be the only others that I would consider. You ask why not American Airlines, well it’s something I witnessed. The head flight attendant telling the passengers that they couldn’t show any respect to a deceased soldier that had lost his life in Afghanistan fighting his country and our country. His wife was there with some honor guards. We were told not to sing god bless America in honor of this soldier because it would be disrespectful to any of the passengers who were not US citizens and it was against American Airlines company policy. I will never ever consider flying with them again. I’d rather walk to my destination instead. I fly with airlines that prioritize with the citizens of their country. And to any of the passengers that this might have effected, that’s to bad. We honor our Heroes in America. Wayne