Good Stuff
1. Great Movie I saw this weekend: Senna, an award-winning documentary about the racing career of Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna. (The 2012 Formula 1 season just began, and will return to the US in November in Austin, TX. Runner-up great movie: Spirited Away.
2. Great Show I discovered last week: Airplane Repo. Exactly as it sounds, it tracks a team of people who travel the world repossessing aircraft for their secured creditors. It’s got travel, thrills, and legal procedure. I want a job with Sage-Popovich, LLC.
3. Great Thing this Weekend: This weather is awesome. Washed two cars, cooked on the grill, wore shorts, and enjoyed early summer.
4. Great Company I dealt with: I had to travel for the day on Friday on Southwest. My final of four flights of the day was to take me from Baltimore to Buffalo, but with the fog, this happened instead:
When we returned, it was amazing to watch people out-do themselves for getting angry at the ground crew who were just trying to rebook people. After about 15 minutes, the airline realized that rebooking wasn’t going to work, and they just added a 6am flight the following morning. Perfect.
174 people were mildly inconvenienced by the weather-related delay that was completely out of the airline’s control. We were best off going back to BWI, which is a Southwest hub. My favorite comment came as it was revealed that there were more bags than people, and the aircraft we had might not fit all the bags. Given that small chance that not all of her bags would be on the flight, a woman angrily barked at the woman taking boarding passes (as if she had anything to do with it) that it was a “disaster”.
No, the plane plunging into the mountains of Pennsylvania would be a “disaster”. A missing bag is merely an inconvenience.
They handed out new boarding passes in the order of our boarding, and I grabbed a room at an airport hotel and got a few hours’ of sleep before returning to the airport at 5am. The fog was still in place on Saturday morning, and when we landed I didn’t see the ground until we were over the Thruway on final approach to runway 23. Kudos to Southwest for so quickly and effectively accommodating us.
Your experience with SW mirrors mine; when things go wrong, they don’t get flustered and move forward to make things right. With that attitude, approach and their business model, it’s no surprise they’re trumping the competition in the markets they serve.
So are they the Wegmans of airlines–?
Totally opposite experience here in ABQ following a weather cancellation… 5 hours just to get to someone who might help, and then they tell you it will be 2 days before they can get you rebooked. United fail.
Flew Southwest awhile back and the lead flight attendent was a funny guy. First time I ever paid attention to the pre-flight mumbo jumbo. And I quote……”This is a non smoking flight. It is a federal offense to disable the smoke detector in an airliners bathroom and may hold a fine of up to $1000. IF you wanted to pay that, you could have flown United.” Funny stuff.
Because I really don’t care what your topic is (one of my goals is Occupy ArtVoice) and to let you know there are actually things we agree on (at least I think) you may have seen this, if not enjoy its pretty funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_fAYl4Th4
These are people that I consider are perverting Christianity
“No, the plane plunging into the mountains of Pennsylvania would be a ‘disaster.’ A missing bag is merely an inconvenience.”
Amen.