Why I’m a Southwest Airlines fan (Jeff is stuck on Northwest)
Jeff Sandquist, my former boss at Microsoft, had a horrible experience on Northwest Airlines today. He’s sitting in the Minneapolis airport. Say hi if you see him. He also just started a wiki to start tracking power and wifi locations at airports. I thought about doing that, but not sure it would really help anyone. Wikipedia, though, does list wifi availability for airports.
Anyway, this reminds me why I am a HUGE fan of Southwest Airlines. Nearly the identical thing happened to me on a recent trip. I was set up to have a connecting flight through Reno. The flight was getting delayed. I was getting nervous. But before anything could happen the flight attendant called out my name and the name of another gentleman.
Turned out she was getting us off the plane and had already booked us on another flight.
It’s weird, but the people who interact with the customers at Southwest are just a lot more interesting than their blog makes them out to be. I’ve been on flights where the attendant tells great jokes. Another time someone sang and got cheers from the passengers.
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July 22nd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
How did she know you were getting nervous?
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Met: she didn’t. She just was proactively helping customers. It was freaking awesome customer service.
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:41 pm
hey, how about that? This happens to me all the time on United and Alaska. If you don’t fly them as often as you fly Southwest, of course you wouldn’t know. Neither of our experiences are indicitive of any thing common.
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:43 pm
I’ve put something like 50,000 miles on both United and Alaska and I’ve had really negative experiences on both. You’re right, but the crowds on Southwest tell me lots of other people like their service and low prices too.
July 22nd, 2006 at 6:52 pm
I was on a recent SWA flight from Chicago to St. Louis that was 2.5 hours delayed. On the flight, we learned that one of the attendants was heading to Vegas after the flight to start a stint on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars”. This person is a dancer that works as a flight attendant when they’re not performing. This story led to a series of jokes, requests for a dance routine in the aisles and generally raised spirits of the passengers. SWA does a great job of encouraging their people to be themselves and have fun doing their job.
July 22nd, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Hey, Robert. On Smallbusiness.com (which is a wiki with some additional features), we have a wiki guide to airports with wifi. Anyone should feel free to add to or copy our list for any other projects like this.
July 22nd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Actually Robert is right. A wiki is a bad idea for this. I setup a Flickr photo group instead.
http://www.jeffsandquist.com/FindingPowerOutletsAtAirports.aspx
July 22nd, 2006 at 7:51 pm
the interesting thing is that soutwest recently just threatened to sue several online business providing guaranteed boarding group a passes to people willing to pay a small fee — they received enough complaints from customers who couldn’t get group a — shows the power of the internet — one phx based company got screwed on the deal (which i understand is still in investigation of the legalities)
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Yea, robert you could be right. Then again, I generally fly first class. Think that makes a difference? ;-)
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Jeff, go back the wiki. The photos could ultimately become outdated for various reasons. I’d much rather have current info and people adding their tips, tricks and observations, correcting misinformation, etc. I don’t see how flikr really ensures the info is up to date.
July 23rd, 2006 at 2:09 am
Jeff has a bad hair travel day and wants to play temper-tantrum pouting blogger. Flying out from some toadsuck town to a family reunion, having a spaz and yabbing about on and on about ‘transparency’. Well, he got the part, starring role even.
And lest you think Southwest is all joy, watch ‘Airline’ on TV. Southwest and JetBlue are in a better position as they are making money, but that’s no coverall, as Southwest treats you as commodity cattle.
I always am on the volunteer bump list (free tickets ahoy) and plan ahead, travel problems are like death, taxes, and loud ranting bloggers — inevitable. Never razor thin it, esp. to odd places in North Dakota and remote parts of the 51st State.
July 23rd, 2006 at 2:24 am
Christopher, I’ve flown on tons of different airlines. They all are commodity cattle. I think that’s what’s neat about Southwest. They don’t even try to pretend they aren’t doing that. But then they actually take care of you better than the other carriers. Not to mention their rates are usually lower anyway.
July 23rd, 2006 at 4:17 am
I’m a million mile United flyer. And have probably put several hundred thousand on Delta and USAir each.
But, SWA is my favorite. They go on time and arrive on time, and they don’t bulls**t anyone.
Flying is like riding a big bus in the sky. Might as well ride on one where the people are friendly and the bus arrives on time.
July 23rd, 2006 at 7:03 am
Lesson learned Chris. ;-) However, if Northwest had let me know that the delay was going to be longer (and they did know it was going to be longer as they were sending 1st class passengers off to another plane). I could have gotten onto a Delta flight to Minneapolis.
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:00 am
I only flew once with NWA - in/out MN from London - never again. Appalling experience - bumped on confirmed booking, didn’t give a rat’s ass.
July 24th, 2006 at 1:51 am
Until you have flown Air Canada, you have no experienced rude flight crews or people who don’t care. I have so many stories but they are numerous enough to crash WordPress. Last year I interviewed for a job with them and withdrew after listening to one of the job trainers talk about how bad customer service is at the airline. Odd thing is that WestJet, which is priced as a low cost competitor offers far superiour customer service and is full of people who seem to really love their jobs.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:58 am
I agree with Robert’s previous comment about commodity cattle. I’ve flown own Southwest flights since the mid 80’s and they’ve never tried to BS you into thinking that you’re on the Concorde. It’s a Greyhound bus in the sky, and they make no bones about it. The shuttle flights (short hop, turn around and go back) are awesome. I had one from Vegas to Austin where the pilot came on the intercom, apologized in advance for a rough flight because he was running a little late, and promised to get us there on time, by golly he did.
And for anybody that thinks Southwest is crappy, try flying America West…..
July 24th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Oh so they are to be applauded for recognizing that you are in fact commodity cattle? My my, how low has customer service sank in that industry, when you start to praise mere acknowledgements of mediocrity.
July 24th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Too bad SWA doesn’t fly to Minneapolis. I would fly them in a second if they did. Sadly, stuck with NWA most of the time.
Some of us here in Minnesota are secretly praying for NWA to go belly up so that MPLS can become competitive again. Of course, half the airport will probably be deserted if that happens, costing lots of jobs…
July 24th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
[...] by: newtelligence dasBlog 1.8.5223.1 Sign In Saturday, 22 July 2006 Finding Power Outlets at Airports So while I am delayed for my Northwest Airlines flight in Minneapolis (read the saga) I decidedto startup a Wiki to help folks track power outlets at airports around the globe. Give it a little time, I’ll pour some love into it over the next little while. If you find an outlet, please add it to the page. Postscript: Maybe as Scoble says a wiki is the wrong idea for this. What about a Flickr group for electrical outlets at airports?Yes! That will work as folks can just snap photos of outlets on their phone and you can search flickr for the photos. Here’s an electrical outlet at Gate C5 - Minneapolis, MN. Its to the left of the counter at Gate C5. I’ve started a photo pool on Flickr for these at called AirPower. Please help! Man, I love the power of the web.Postscript: By popular demand, I’m keeping both the Wiki and the Flickr Group Alive. technorati tags: AirPower 07/22/2006 16:33:55 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) Comments [3] [...]
July 25th, 2006 at 7:27 am
I read this a few hours before flying on a Southwest flight from Salt Lake to Cleveland. My flight got delayed, and was scheduled to land 5 minutes before my connecting flight left. The gate attendant who was scanning the boarding passes noticed this while I was was boarding the plane had another employee look for other options. I got pulled off the plane and put on another flight that so that I would make it to Cleveland on time. Any other airline would have had me fly to the connection city, miss the flight, and figure it out from there. I don’t mind being cattle when they look out for you so well.
July 26th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Ok…I’m really not digging the whole “cattle” or “bus” references to our airline but I am digging the Customer Service stories. Just goes to prove what happens when a Company hires for attitude and puts its employees first…happy employees translates to excellent service. I’m guessing WestJet also has good employee relations as well.
As far as this statement from your post:
“It’s weird, but the people who interact with the customers at Southwest are just a lot more interesting than their blog makes them out to be.”
Are you saying we’re not doing a good job of showing our Employee’s personality on the blog?
Angela (Southwest Blog Chic)
July 27th, 2006 at 5:56 am
The real diff in seating on our airline versus the other guys is that on Southwest you still have a chance to get a good seat even if you bought your ticket at the last minute. Simply wait in line. On the other airlines you already know that your seat assignment “sucked” when you bought the ticket months in advance.
September 28th, 2006 at 6:29 am
I was on a Southwest flight to Canada. Not only were they late but they landed in a completely different city! Then we had to wait for hours on a bus to take us across snow & icy roads. It was 4 o’clock in the morning (candian time) before we reached our destination.I will never fly SW again!!!
October 17th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
SWN to Canada? When did that start?
I love SWN. I haven’t had any wonderful CSR experiences, just ontime flight from a company with the right attitude!
December 12th, 2006 at 3:46 am
Yeah!…
Southwest Airlines is known for their great costumer attention…
I read that its one of the company’s priority and they even train their staff on how to just do that!
Jonathan Lewis
Webmaster
http://GuideToCheapAirlineTickets.useful-tips.com/
December 16th, 2006 at 11:28 am
the problem w/southwest is that if you aren’t at one of their more hubbish type cities, you can’t fly nonstop to many locations
also, out of DTW, southwest’s gates are in the godforsaken terminal
if you can deal with the open seating and group boarding, there is no better carrier….
December 27th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Certainly, as a Northwest Employee, I feel super bad about this experience. Northwest is working very dilligently with their front-line work force to change the culture of our airline. I think you will see big changes in the next few years as far a customer service is concerned.