Southwest Airlines Archives

Absurd Airport Announcements for a Fantastic Friday

by jphilo | Jul 8, 2016 | Out and About

Today’s Fantastic Friday post was easy to choose after my recent overseas airport adventure. The adventure featured in this look back occurred in July of 2011. Not overseas, but right here in the United States. The Man of Steel and I are off to Idaho tomorrow, and we’re hoping the warnings to parents regarding the whereabouts of their children continue to be heeded and only baggage is to be seen on the carousels this trip.

Keep Your Children Off the Baggage Carousel

After an entertaining and/or character building (depending on your perspective), virtually un-re-create-able travel adventure, we are finally home.

Hallelujah!

Perhaps the deer that darted onto the busy highway between Sand Point and Coeur d’Alene in front of our driver’s car was an omen. But since the car missed the deer or the deer missed the car (depending on your perspective), we blithely continued onto the Spokane airport and arrived there with time to check in and eat lunch. We even snagged a free pizza since whoever ordered before us never picked up theirs.

Buoyed with the anticipation of snarfing down free pizza once we landed in Denver and ran to catch our connecting flight, we blithely walked to the gate and waited to board our Southwest Airline flight to Denver. Maybe strange overhead announcements were an omen of what lay ahead, but we and the other passengers only laughed harder as the warnings progressed:

ANNOUNCEMENT #1: It is against safety regulations to allow children to sit on the edge of a baggage carousel. Please do not allow children to sit on the edge of Baggage Carousel #2.

ANNOUNCEMENT #2: It is against federal safety regulations for children to sit on the edge of a baggage carousel. When it starts moving, they could be injured. Parents, be sure your children are not sitting on the edge of Baggage Carousel #2.

ANNOUNCEMENT #3: This is the third warning about allowing children to sit on the edge of the baggage carousel. It will start moving in 2 minutes, and they could tip onto the carousel or lose fingers when it starts moving. Please remove your children from the edge of the baggage carousel immediately.

ANNOUNCEMENT #4: Parents, this is your third warning. (Apparently, the announcement maker had lost count.) Get your children off the edge of the baggage carousel immediately. The luggage will be arriving soon. Remove your children immediately.

We were still chuckling about the announcement 2 hours later on our approach to Denver, but the laughter dried up when the pilot mumbled, “The Denver airport is closed due to a severe thunderstorm, and we’re being rerouted to Amarillo, Texas.”

Amarillo, Texas?

No one was laughing fifty-five minutes later when we landed in Amarillo. No one laughed when the pilot continued his mumbling. “The storm has moved out of Denver, so we’ll get gas and go back. All your connecting flights have been delayed, so there’s a good chance you’ll be able to make them.”

Hallelujah!

Except that half of the 200+ passengers were in line to use the 2 tiny airport potties, and the good news went right over our heads. The other half were staring out the windows at the oddest looking aircraft we’d ever seen.

“Looks like a dolphin,” said the young woman next to me. “And it has NASA printed on it.”

“Or it could be Shamu,” I suggested. “Who knew there was a Sea World on the Amarillo, Texas airport? Or we’ve been rerouted to a hush, hush NASA site for flight training.”

Pretty soon, we were on our way and arrived in Denver just in time to board our connecting flight to Omaha, snarfing free pizza as we ran.

Hallelujah!

That flight was uneventful, as was our late night drive home and our arrival at 3:30 AM. We were asleep in our beds by 4:00 AM. Our luggage, which did not make the connecting flight is supposed to arrive tomorrow. And I cleared up the NASA Shamu mystery with a little online research. It revealed that our NASA Shamu is really a NASA Super Guppy. Which leaves only two loose ends to wrap up right here, right now.

To the person who ordered and forgot to pick up the Hawaiian pizza at the Dave’s House of Pizza Kiosk: It was delicious. Thank you so much for sharing your supper with us.

To anyone who was in the vicinity of Spokane Airport’s baggage claim area between 2 and 4 on Tuesday afternoon: If you know what happened to the kids on Baggage Carousel #2, please leave a comment. We could use some closure and a final hallelujah!

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Three Thoughts for Thursday

by jphilo | Jan 28, 2016 | Three Thoughts for Thursday

Alan Rickman, you are and will be dearly missed.
If you are ever on a Southwest Airline flight to Arizona while an Arizona Cardinals play off game is in progress, the pilot commandeer the loudspeaker to provide color commentary and lead a few cheers.
Nabbing the last available aisle seat in the last row of an airplane comes with a couple unexpected perks. Not only are you mere feet from the lavatory, but you can also hear the flight attendants gossip when they’re seated during take off and touch down.

Top Ten Air Travel Thoughts

by jphilo | Oct 6, 2015 | Uncategorized

Long airport layovers give a person plenty of think time. Here are 10 things I’ve been thinking while sitting in airports lately.

10. Sitting beside a sweet 12-year-old during her first flight ever makes flying fun again.

9. Smart phone boarding passes. Totally worth the price of an iPhone.

8. If we can send men to the moon, why can’t escalator handrails be programmed to move at the same speed as the escalator steps?

7. I predict that in the next few years cup holders will become a fixture, not only on chairs in airport gates, but also in airport bathroom stalls.

6. Airport coffee shops. Ahhh!

5. Diabetics, people with celiac disease, and dairy allergies should never be assigned to airport gates directly across from Cinnabon. It’s cruel and unusual punishment.

4. In addition their two free bags policy, Southwest Airlines flight crews give extra peanuts if you ask.

3. They also let you use the bathroom before take off. Especially if you ask with a very pained expression. Don’t ask how I know this.

2. And when they page a passenger with an ordinary name to come to the front of the plane, they also page Brad Pitt. Believe me, that gets everyone’s attention right away.

1. Sadly, the powers that be removed the Blues Brother statue from its spot between the A and B terminals at Chicago Midway Airport. Only the sight of a Southwest gate attendant in a black fedora mitigated this traveler’s disappointment.

What do you think about during airport layovers? Keep it clean, people!

Top Ten Reasons to Love Southwest Airlines Today

by jphilo | Apr 21, 2015 | Out and About, Top Ten Tuesday

Last weekend’s trip to the Accessibility Summit conference was wonderful, as always. But this trip included a bonus perk: the flights too and from the conference were wonderful, too. In fact they were so wonderful, I feel compelled to list Southwest’s top ten wonderfulnesses since previous posts on this blog have bemoaned travel travails associated with this airline.

10. No flight delays. Not one. Most of the time we got to the gate early.

9. The early Sunday morning flight from DC to Chicago Midway had only about 3 dozen passengers. So my flying buddy and I sat in the front row. With extra legroom. The perfect opportunity to pretend we were flying first class. And I was the first person off the plane for the first time in my whole life.

8. 2 bags free. Which for an author carrying books to sell is money in the bank.

7. Southwest now has free gate-to-gate WiFi. Which, if I had enough tech savvy to figure out how to make it work, would have been a real perk. My flying buddy got it running on her phone, but she didn’t know how it happened, so she couldn’t teach me.

6. They still serve free snacks. Pretzels and peanuts.

5. Southwest has Goldilocks layovers. Not to long, not to short, but just right.

4. Their magazine is about more than travel. A few years ago, it had an article about Harvard Medical School’s Brazelton Institute, dedicated to healthy development of infants and young children. It was a boon to the research for Does My Child Have PTSD?

3. Some of their employees must moonlight as stand up comedians. More than one of them have jazzed up the safety instructions at the beginning of their flights so people actually pay attention. And maybe even laugh.

2. Those same employees can also use the perfect combination of humor and steely determination to keep 40 eighth graders–on their way to DC for a class trip–from running amok on a crowded plane.

1. Southwest flies out of Des Moines, so after a long day of air travel home is only a 45 minute drive away.

What’s your favorite airline? What makes it your favorite? Leave a comment.

Top 10 Lessons Learned During 6 Hour Southwest Airline Flight Delay

by jphilo | Apr 24, 2012 | Out and About, Top Ten Tuesday

Over the weekend, I attended the McLean Bible Church’s Accessibility Summit. The trip was a short one, rendered even shorter by a 6 hour delay in the Southwest flight out of Omaha. The Omaha airport is small, and Terminal B, where we were trapped because our boarding passes had already been collected and the staff wasn’t forthcoming with new ones, is even smaller. Determined to polish my perky, Pollyanna image, I spent the 6 hour delay refining the following top ten lessons list:

10. The delay was the perfect opportunity to guess which men and women, during their childhoods, knocked fourth grade classmates out of the way in order to get to the front of the line.

9. The second thing to do when a flight delay is announced (the first thing is to knock people out of the way so you can be first in line at the customer service desk) is to find an electrical outlet, plug in your phone, laptop, or iPad, and camp out.

8. This spring’s top color combo for infant girl clothing is brown and pink.

7. Much as I love my kids, I am thankful we no longer need to travel with young children.

6. Janet Evanovich books on an iPad make the delay much funnier.

5. When the only food vendor in the terminal is Godfather’s Pizza, people with a dairy allergies go hungry.

4. Customer service people are trained to be courteous and patient, but not particularly forthcoming with information. On the flip side, riding herd on fourth graders is easier than dealing with irate airline passengers facing a 6 hour delay.

3. 6 hours is long enough for the most technologically-challenged person to fall in love with an iPad 3.

2. 6 hours is not long enough for a person to master the art of spreading the sanitary cover on the toilet and perching before the automatic switch flushes it away.

1. 6 hour delays are to be expected when you accidentally pack your deodorant in your checked luggage instead of your carry on bag.

Now it’s your turn. What lessons have you learned during flight delays? Leave a comment.