# Does anyone actually care what airline they fly? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 27, 2005, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958 "2005-01-27T18:37:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2005, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/61 "2005-01-30T14:12:01Z")
> [@deena](#): > > What part of the plane do you prefer to sit on? The inside. ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2005, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/62 "2005-01-30T14:13:02Z")
Caution - equally sick minds at work. ---
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2005, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/63 "2005-01-30T18:21:58Z")
I won’t fly American, as hard as they are to avoid in St. Louis, for three reasons: 1. You have a toddler and you want to pre-board? Sorry. And we’ll be snotty about telling you no. 2. You’ve been stuck in O’Hare for six hours and your flight’s delayed by four hours and you want a meal voucher? Sorry. Again, we’ll be as snotty and bitchy as possible when telling you and we’ll make your girlfriend cry. (Making Natalie cry = guaranteed anger from me) 3. But don’t you worry. We’ll keep the hub in St. Louis. it’s staying. Yessiree Bob, there’s a hub… HA HA HA, no more hub! Didn’t see THAT coming, did you!? Screw you and your little airport too! (I guess the purple carpet on the walls wasn’t enough to convince them to stay.) I fly Southwest whenever I can, since their terminal is only about 10 years old, they’re cheap, they fly most places I need to go, and there’s a TCBY in the terminal building. Really, that’s all I ask. For direct flights to Fort Myers, there’s a new discount airline called USA 3000 - anyone know anything about it? If I have to fly there or back, it’ll probably be the one I take. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2005, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/64 "2005-01-30T18:34:19Z")
For domestic flights, I haven’t noticed a significant difference in service, quality, or promptness among ANY of the major carriers. And that’s a shame, because the service and comfort level are pretty mediocre in ALL the major airlines, if you’re flying coach. Luckily, I don’t demand much of an airline except that it get me where I’m going. So, since I don’t tend to get top-notch service or great comfort anywhere, I’m inclined to pick the airline that goes where I’m going most directly. Since the route I fly most often is Austin-New York, I choose Northwest, because I can’t fly direct (not since Pan Am went out of business), and Memphis is the hub that makes the most sense on that route. ---
**Author:** ![PastAllReason](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f07891/32.png) [@PastAllReason](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastAllReason)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2005, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/65 "2005-01-30T18:41:28Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I’ll fly Air Canada whenever possible, and avoid Delta, American, and USAir at all costs. I’ll avoid Air Canada **whenever** possible. In Canada I prefer WestJet, though I’ll confess that their terminal at Pearson (in Toronto) is practically a wasteland now with very few shops or restaurants now that Air Canada has moved out of that terminal. Still that only matters if I’m flying east. I like being on an airline whether the planes are consistently 737s and the airline employees actually seem to appreciate their customers. ---
**Author:** ![Danalan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@Danalan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danalan)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2005, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/66 "2005-01-31T03:06:49Z")
> [@ianzin](#): > > Hi **Danalan**. I checked out the second link you provided. It involves a puzzle, to identify the contents of a red packet bearing the words ‘Hi girls / hi God’. Did the guy running that site ever answer the question, or does anyone know? [Mints.](http://norman.walsh.name/2004/03/13/whatitis) ---
**Author:** ![missbunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/76d3ee/32.png) [@missbunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missbunny)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2005, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/67 "2005-01-31T15:40:36Z")
> [@missbunny](#): > > He wouldn’t fly AA even if they gave him tickets for free. He vowed to never give them one cent of his money again. > [@Jeff Peanut](#): > > Well then wouldnt he WANT to fly with them if the tickets were free? I understand that you were just making a funny, but that’s not what I said, and what you have extrapolated doesn’t mean the same thing as what I did say. You have shown exactly what happens when people are quoted out of context. No biggie but don’t do it if you write for a newspaper! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![chaparralv8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@chaparralv8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaparralv8)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2005, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/68 "2005-01-31T15:57:56Z")
I’ll fly Southwest whenever I can. If it’s a $10 or $20 premium, domestic roundtrip, I’ll spring for it. Seating by 40-yard dash works really, really well for me and I’ve written a letter to them asking them to keep it. You see, I run a 4.3 second 40, and that means I can choose whatever seat I want if I fly Southwest and get an early boarding group number. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2005, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958/69 "2005-01-31T23:03:02Z")
When I’m on business, I prefer Northwest as they’re the only game in town for non-stop service between SFO, OAK or SJC to MSP. For those that don’t speak airport codes, that means nobody else offers non-stop flights between the Bay Area and Mineapolis, and when I’m flying on business, it’s between those cities. I don’t quite understand the unspecified bile I see against NWA. Their coach class seems to be just as crummy as United, American, America West or Delta. Sure, their seats often have more personality than the cabin crew, but I haven’t had anyone be anything even close to rude to me. Actually, I had to talk to a human reservation agent last week, and she was a delight. I don’t know if it’s because she was truly a nice person, or because my call got routed to the “We want to take care of these corporate folks” desk, but it was a friendly and efficient call. Their eastbound lunch sandwiches are just shy of mediocre but the micro bag of Fritos is OK, and the westbound lunches are clueless - a sandwich with a bag of baby carrots and an Atkins “smores” bar. I generally eat the slice of ham and carrots and keep the Atkins bar in my bag as emergency rations or putty in case I ever need to patch a leaky pipe. When I’m flying for fun, I am a lot more price-conscious, but there \*are \* limits. On m last SFO-MSP flight, the in-house booking system offered up a 17-hour excursion from San Francisco to Denver to Winnipeg to Detroit to Minneapolis as the “baseline” fare that I was supposed to stay within $100 of. Sorry, boss, I’m not taking four flights and enduring four boarding processes and praying that my luggage isn’t lost on this three-airline trek across the planet. To my friends at the corporate travel desk - WTF??? Who concocted this insanity? Was it just a joke to see how many flights you could cram into an itinerary and stay within 24 hours? Even if I were paying for the flight myself, I wouldn’t take that routing. But seriously, for pleasure trips, I’m all over Travelocity and Expedia looking for slightly off-times or different airports all in an effort to save a few bucks. Southwest is my first pick, when available. Their fares are decent and the pricing can be shown in a simple chart - fully refundable vs non-refundable and how far in advance you buy. I haven’t seen another airline be able to do that. Their first-here, first dibs on seats scheme doesn’t bother me much. I don’t complain that I can’t reserve a seat on the subway, why should I get into a lather because I reserve a seat on a flight to LA that’s probably a shorter-time ride than my commute. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-actually-care-what-airline-they-fly/286958.md?page=3)