dear southwest airlines

In December of 2008 I wrote this post about a horrific airline experience. And believe it or not, it still frustrates me to this day. Fortunately, the post you are about to read is not about a horrific airline experience. Quite the contrary.

Dear Southwest Airlines. You do not suck.

Our flight wasn't canceled hours before we were due to take off so I suppose they had one up on American before we even began. But the real story starts on the curb. There was a short wait & slight confusion at the skycap but nothing compared to the hour I've stood on the Miami American Airlines pavement. Inside the Oakland Aiport there was the most beautiful security line I've ever seen. (Little things like this can make a mom traveling with two little ones just want to tear up and cry.) But wait. It gets better. The gate was about 25 short paces inside security and what happened to be sitting IN THE GATE? Um, yeah. You know me far too well. Starbucks. Nice.

(OK, I know this really has nothing to do with Southwest Airlines but it all just kind of synched up nicely so I'm gonna give them credit for the coincidences too. This is my blog. I can do that.)

Yes, there's more. Sit and stay a while or just leave now.

As we were getting outside of our car Gage dropped his new and highly coveted baseball card collection and the plastic case broke. We solved the problem temporarily by wrapping my pony tail holder around the cards but Gage was definitely not pleased. I assured him that I would find a better solution in the airport. So. What do you think was on the other side of the gate? Yeah, a sports store. Really. Weird? Yeah. But who the hell cares!?

Gage and I went into the 100 square foot sports store and they just so happened to sell baseball cards in little plastic cases. I took a sip of my Starbucks latte and grinned. This was going to be a good trip.

I've traveled Southwest for business to LA and have always deemed their speedy boarding process as the best in the industry. Herd them in. Take off. Easy, right? Well, everything takes on a whole new light when you're traveling with kids. The idea of no seat assignments was a little intimidating for a mom with two not-yet-independent ones but I was assured that we would all be able to sit together. Seems that assurance is called "family boarding" and occurs just between groups A and B. The five of us got seats together just behind the wing, and the emergency exit. We were cozy, caffeinated and ready to go.

Sort of.

All of the sudden there were two flight attendants at the row in front of us tending to a woman that couldn't catch her breath. They were thoughtful and compassionate and concerned. Yeah, you might get that on American. Then? The pilot came back. They clearly all wanted to know if she could really take the flight because I'm guessing none of them wanted to turn around and start all over again in 10 minutes. Once they assessed that she could fly they were bright enough to immediately usher her out of the exit row and replace her with a big burly guy that might actually be able to (dare I say it?) open that door in the event of an emergency. They then proceeded to the opposite row of exit seats and removed the wilting, non-English speaking woman by the window and her wanna be cool kid son and replaced them with...you guessed it...two big burly boys. Stereotyping at it's best and I was damn pleased.

So we sat back in our spacious (comparatively speaking) leather seats, enjoyed our free pretzels & peanuts...and arrived 10 minutes early. Thank you, Southwest. Now you just need to start flying direct to Miami and I'll have nothing left to complain about. Well, one less thing.