Southwest Fan and FlyerTalk moderator for the Southwest forum Drew gets a photo with Santa at Phoenix.
Traveling during the holidays can be very stressful. Why not put a little cheer into your holiday travel experience with a fun photo with Santa?
Southwest Airlines is teaming with Microsoft to provide free photos with Santa at participating airports (Seattle is included). If you aren’t able to make it out for photos, you can still create your own holiday card online or sign up for their contest to win cool stuff including Southwest Airlines tickets.
There are only four more days to get your photo: December 17-20th before Santa needs to head north to get ready to delivery presents. I wanted to try and make it down to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to get my own photo, but my schedule wouldn’t allow it. Luckily Drew (aka @curbcrusher) who lives in Phoenix and is a moderator for the Southwest Forum on FlyerTalk.com, was happy to share his photo. High-five is right Drew and Santa! Party on.
Virgin America Airbus A320 and Southwest Boeing 737-300 at Las Vegas
I couldn’t care less what celebrities do on airplanes. You see them all the time in the news getting in trouble. I hate the idea that I am writing about a celebrity and an airline, but I just can’t help myself. Back in February Director Kevin Smith had a little issue with Southwest Airlines and I managed to not write anything on it, even though I had a lot to say. In case you missed it, Smith was on a full Southwest flight and the flight crew made the call that he was a bit too large for one seat and was asked to leave the plane since there was no second seat available. Smith used his 1.5 million Twitter followers at the time and fame to turn the incident into a huge deal. Southwest tried to work to make him happy, but it only caused him to get more upset. Many were delighted that Southwest stood up against passengers of size and others felt they were being too harsh. I just found it interesting that Smith had a new movie coming out around the same time.
Smith declared he would never fly Southwest again and from what I have heard, he has kept his promise. Yesterday Smith had a flight on Virgin America from New York to Los Angeles and ran into a little trouble. In an open letter to the airline on his blog, Smith stated that he and his guests arrived at the airport an hour before boarding time. Since they were early they headed to the lounge to relax. Boarding for their 11:45am flight started at 11:15am and they arrived at the gate at 11:35am to find the gate agent was in the process of closing the door. Smith had hired a concierge to make sure he boarded the plane last so people wouldn’t gawk at him being on the aircraft. He states that his concierge does this all the time and boarding 10 minutes before departure is standard procedure for clients.
They pleaded, but the gate agent wouldn’t let Smith’s group board the aircraft. Smith’s main concern was that their bags would already be on the aircraft and his wife needed her medication. Now, why anyone who needed medication would not keep it in their carry-on, I do not get. The gate agent wouldn’t remove their bags and would not let them board the aircraft and Smith got angry and took his ranting to the web.
On his first rant at 2:00pm, Smith stated that he will be avoiding Virgin America, “like the plague.” It was almost like history repeating when he described how he flies so much and spends so much money and no one he knows will ever fly on Virgin America or Virgin Atlantic again. Of course us airline geeks know they are separate companies with similar branding, so it doesn’t mean too much. By the time he landed in LAX at 5:10pm his tone changed a bit. He stated, “@VirginAtlantic [sic – guessing he meant @VirginAmerica] seems to care: lovely, apologetic email, full refund for flight, free tix offer – all before I’ve landed. I appreciate the gesture/effort.” In another update posted at 5:45pm Smith stated that Virgin America, “did EXACTLY what any corporation/company should do when their customers have issues with their service: they almost instantly self-corrected.
I contacted Virgin America, but the are deciding to stay out of the comment business… which is probably smart. Southwest tried to interact with Smith via their blog in a public format and that only ended up making him more upset and created a bigger national story.
Although Virgin’s contract of carriage clearly states that passengers, “must be at the boarding gate at least fifteen (15) minutes prior to scheduled departure time,” that seems to be a pretty flexible. I know I have been running late and ran on a flight just minutes before departure time. If you look just at the rules, it looks like Virgin America had every right to deny Smith and his party from boarding, but that doesn’t mean it was the right call. I don’t feel that Virgin America just paid off Smith to make him happy; it looks like they did it since a few local gate agents stood by the rules a little too harshly. However, with Virgin America being on top of social media, they were able to stop this incident before it got any worse.
Image: gTarded
These tips will help you find the best seat on a Southwest flight – Photo: Southwest Airlines
Love it or hate it, Southwest Airlines has a unique seating process. Where most airlines will assign you an exact seat, Southwest gives you a boarding number and you can choose any open seat on the plane. Some enjoy choosing who they sit next to, but others don’t like the added anxiety of not knowing where you will sit until you are on the plane. I wanted to run down some ideas on how to get the best seat possible on a Southwest Airlines flight. They have seemed to work out pretty darn well for me over the years.
If you haven’t flown Southwest before, it can be a little confusing. When you check in, you will get a boarding letter – A, B or C – and a number – 1-60. A1 is the best and C23 (on a 737-700) / C55 (on a 737-800) is the worst. No matter what number you have, there are ways to improve where you sit — unless you are last to board.
Some of Southwest's "Bags Fly Free" advertising.
If you are an airline geek or have a TV you probably have a good idea that bags fly free with Southwest Airlines. As airline after airline started to charge for bags, Southwest stuck to their guns with no fees. More recently they have started a large advertising campaign hoping that passengers are angry at the fees and will change airlines.
Although personally I do not like paying bag fees, I understand them; weight costs money. The heavier the plane, the most it costs to fly and for now, fees are generating a lot of money for airlines. Passengers will complain about them, but are they changing airlines?
Southwest is making the bet that additional fees will not work in the long run and they will make more revenue earning more passengers than they are losing by not charging bag fees. It is a big bet, but if they lose, Southwest can always start charging bag fees.
In May 2010 Southwest completed a survey of 3900 business and leisure passengers where they could pick from 55 choices what aspect is most important to them when choosing an airline. Here are the top five “needs” for business travelers:
1. Has good safety record
2. Offers non-stop flights where I want to go
3. Has convenient flight times
4. Provides good value
5. Does not charge fees
And the top five for leisure travelers:
1) Has good safety record
2) Provides good value
3) Does not charge fees
4) Offers non-stop flights where I want to go
5) Has sales on fares
The fact that charging fees made it on the top five for business travelers is surprising to me. Most business travelers do not have to worry about the fees, since their company will pick up the charges. However, Southwest stated that even though business travelers don’t have to pay, some will have to process an expense report and explain why the additional charges are on the trip. That is annoying and takes time.
Southwest’s next step is to advertise they do not have ticket-change fees either. This won’t be as easy to get across to customers as the no bag fees. It is more obvious for a passenger to know if they have to pay for a bag. It is more difficult for passengers to know if something will come up and they will need to change their flight. Southwest feels confident they can get the message across with a series of new creative ads.
Gary Kelly, Southwest’s CEO and President, wondered out loud at their recent Media Day event, why airlines would do something passengers hate. He stated that Southwest feels lucky that almost every other airline is charging for bags and they are not.
We won’t know how successful no fees will be, but so far Southwest is reporting both growth in leisure and business travelers. I have previously stated it is not an airline’s fault for charging fees… passengers choose to pay them. If passengers are willing to pay fees, airlines will continue to charge them. If passengers rebel against the fees and choose airlines that do not charge them, you will see fees start to go away (although ticket prices will most likely go up). It is a great experiment and I think so far it is working well for Southwest.
Image by Paul Thompson with Southwest Airlines
AirTran Boeing 737 landing in Atlanta.
As I am sure you know, Southwest is try to purchase AirTran. This is a very interesting process since we are looking at two low cost carriers becoming one and Southwest taking on a new aircraft type: the Boeing 717.
There are still a lot of questions out there about the merger and I was hoping to get some more insight while hanging out with Southwest in Dallas for their yearly media day. Unfortunately at this point there aren’t a heck of a lot more answers, but I at least have a few more pieces of information.
The big thing to remember is that Southwest and AirTran are still separate companies and competitors. Even though it looks like this buy-out should go through with no issue, AirTran is not about to give up all their secrets until the deal is final. This doesn’t mean that Southwest isn’t working hard already, they just don’t have all the answers right now. Southwest currently has 30 different teams in seven different categories to prepare for the new larger company.
The addition of the Boeing 717 to Southwest’s all Boeing 737 fleet is something that definitely piques my curiosity. Southwest stated they feel this will be one of the smoothest transitions. AirTran already has a good system with their 717 and 737 aircraft and they plan to keep AirTran’s current system of organizing the different planes.
When asked about the Boeing 717 and Boeing 737-500, which are designed to serve similar markets, Southwest stated that the 737-500’s will be coming off lease in 2013-2015. At that time, they will want to have a newer small aircraft to replace them. They made it sound like the Boeing 717 would do that perfectly, but I am not so sure. I wonder if the Boeing 717 is the right aircraft type to provide smaller markets. It seems it might be beneficial for Southwest to look at not being an “all Boeing” airline and start looking at Bombardier C-series aircraft.
Another big interest is Southwest being able to start flying out of Atlanta (ATL). They seem very excited to get AirTran’s slots and are already planning to serve at least 24 new destinations from ATL that AirTran doesn’t currently serve. Southwest stated they aren’t looking to directly complete with any airlines in ATL (aka Delta), but am guessing there is more talk of competition behind closed doors. Southwest explained they hope they could offer airfares as much as 40% lower to ATL than the competition (aka Delta). Now that sounds like competitive talk to me. It looks like ATL will become quite important to Southwest. They stated that Atlanta might quickly become the largest city in their network, flying up to 2,000,000 passengers to the airport.
Some media voiced their concern about loyal AirTran passengers who are used to Business Class, Wi-Fi on all their flights and assigned seats. This is a big change to transition to all economy, Wi-Fi on some aircraft (will be all by mid-2013) and open seating. Southwest didn’t seem too concerned. They stated they know there are quite a few loyal Southwest passengers who would love to fly them into ATL, but just can’t do it right now. They also plan to educate fliers to promote Southwest’s unique brand of service.
Southwest stated that they aren’t looking to eliminate AirTran with the buy out, but that they hope to learn from them in every way they can to make a bigger and better airline. With Southwest announcing they will be flying into larger airports like Newark on top of buying out AirTran, it is anyone’s guess what Southwest might do next. There was talk of flying longer distances possibly Hawaii (which was mentioned half a dozen times), South America and more. I say… game on.
