Inspired by this thread, in which the OP describes a very frustrating experience with American Airlines… I’d like to hear stories of GOOD experiences with the different airlines.
I’ll start, with a story involving American Airlines, no less. Last October, Mrs. HeyHomie and I flew from Springfield to Orlando via St. Louis. When we went to check in at the counter at St. Louis we saw a HUGE crowd in the little seating area, and two extremely harried and stressed-out employees doing their darndest to check people in. The guy in front of us was being a class-A jerk, and when the lady said “we’ve oversold this flight but we’ll do our best for you,” he really made a scene and started yelling and cussing, etc.
When Mrs. HeyHomie and I got there, the lady told us that they had oversold, yada yada yada. I just smiled and told her to do the best she could (read my footnote before moving on), and that Mrs. HeyHomie and I would go get something to eat and check back later.
A few minutes later, we were waiting by the counter when we were paged. Expecting the worst, we went up and the lady handed us our tickets. FIRST CLASS! And after we had boarded our plane and were sitting there sipping our free drinks, the counter agent popped her head in and smiled at us before the attendants closed the door.
Isn’t that a nice story?
FOOTNOTE: Ya know, to fly from St. Louis to Orlando takes, oh, two hours and some change. To drive there would take twenty hours. For my money, then, nothing really changes for me if I’m made to take a flight that’s a couple of hours later. I still get to my destination MUCH faster than I would by driving, and I get a free ticket in the process. So being hateful with the counter agent rarely helps, and being nice pays off.
Every time I have flown on Southwest Airlines it has been wonderful.
None of the nonsense from the other airlines. I’m so glad they are doing well these days. They’ve been smart from the beginning, not afraid to try new things, and their people actually have the authority to make decisions. I wish more companies operated that way.
I once flew on ATA from New York to Indianapolis via Chicago. When I got to the airport at NY, I was able to get my boarding pass in about 12 seconds via ATA’s electronic boarding pass-printing thingy. I just stuck my credit card in there, it said it had found my tickets and printed my pass. Then, when I got to Chicago, I noticed that there was another ATA flight to Indianapolis an hour earlier than the one that I had booked. I asked the nice lady at the ticket counter if there were any seats left on that and if it was possible to switch. She said sure, grabbed my ticket, pressed a few buttons and printed me a new one, no charge.
Also, the flight from Chicago to Indy was on a little propeller-driven thingy that sat maybe 50 people, which was fun, since I had only ever been on big jets before.
I used to fly in and out of Portlland Oregon lots. I knew the agents at the United Red Carpet club by name.
So one winter Friday afternoon I get to the airport and when the skycap looks at his terminal he tells me my flight has been scrubed. I ask him to get my luggage checked and I will worry about me when I get inside.
So I head up to the club. As I walk in and go to say hi one of my agents tells me “Don’t say a word, I already have you rebooked. Just go get a drink, I’ll be there in a minute.”
So a couple of minutes later, she comes over and hands me a ticket on Alaska Airlines. She then got my luggage transfered to Alaska, and made sure that I got my miles for the flight.
What a lady.
It was a sad day for me when she retired.
Best experience? SAS from Stockholm to Frankfurt. We had way over the allowable within-Europe limit for baggage weight (but were within the US-Europe limit) – we had flown to Frankfurt from the US and driven to Stockholm, and bought the SAS flight when our ride back fell through. Facing massive charges for the over-weight, we sorrowfully headed to the airport. (We couldn’t even tell our sob story, because we purchased round-trip not one-way tickets because they were far cheaper!) LukeoftheValley chatted in his native Swedish to the woman at the check in counter, who mildly scolded him and said <translated from Swedish>, “I’ll let you go this time, but be sure you don’t bring as much on the return flight. And use the money you saved to take Lily for a nice dinner in Frankfurt.”
I gotta love that woman. Plus, on that short flight we got the best breakfast I’ve ever had on an airplane.
I was flying from Mexico City to San Francisco on Continental. There was a layover in Houston where we discovered that bad weather in SF had caused a delay. The Continental people were so great. They had lots and lots of snacks, which was neat, but the best part was that they gave us constant updates on the weather and runway situations, so that we knew when it might be possible that we leave. In past experiences, airlines were extremely reluctant to share any useful information; this was a very pleasant change.
Thirty years ago I developed a phobia of flying. I was trying to be as quiet as I could but it was easy to see that I was beginning to panic. We had a stopover in another country. Despite regulations, the flight attendant, while we were still on the ground, brought me a couple of drinks to calm me down a little. When we took off again, a pilot who was on the plane came and sat next to me and explained what all of the changes in the sounds the plane was making were about. They were wonderful but I haven’t flown since.
But thats about to change. I’m planning a trip to Paris next year. This time I will take plenty of Xanax and sleeping medications instead of having a burbon. I refuse to let my uneasiness ruin seeing Paris before I’m too old to go on my own.
I flew on American about a month ago: round trip, 4 flights total Overall it was a good experience. All the flights left on time, and a couple of them landed earlier than scheduled. And I thought the coach cabin was roomy enough-- I can certainly remember flying on planes with much less legroom.
I like the system of boarding they use now: Groups 1 through 5 instead of calling out row numbers. They print your name out on the luggage tag. That’s helpful.
The e-ticket thing is a good thing; it saved me a lot of time not having to wait in the long line for the agent.
A few years ago flying from London to LA on Virgin, I got a free upgrade to 1st class - very nice!
The last time I flew from Dublin to London on BA, it could have been a disaster except for their great staff. Their telecoms system was down, so there were delays while they figured out how to do check-in. The guy calmly and completely explained what was going on and what they were going to do about it. Later at the gate, the guy turned up again and announced that their checkin system hadn’t really been working right after all and it had given every passenger the same seat assignment! Instead of getting all anal over it, he just said ‘since the flight isn’t very full, just get on and find a seat’.
Trying to get back to San Diego from Cincinnati in December, our flight was booked on TWA. Every flight on TWA goes through St. Louis, and they had just closed the St. Louis airport due to weather. There is this mass of upset passengers at the TWA desk trying to rebook.
We find there is a Delta non-stop about to board. We run, baggage and all, from the TWA desk to the Delta gate (if you’ve ever been to Cinci, you can appreciate this distance - and of course, the gate we need is at the end of the terminal !). They are about the close the doors on the plane as we explain our plight to the Delta gate keeper. He looks over our tickets and simply waves us on ! Because it was non-stop we even got home hours earlier than we had expected.
It did pay off - I have been a loyal Delta flyer (most of the time) ever since. That one sympathetic gesture really had an impact on me.
When I flew to Vegas last year, Continental offered me a voucher if I’d take a bump to a slightly later flight. The later flight they booked me on was only about 1 hour later, but on Northwest instead. So I took it, and when I layed over and got on the second part of my flight (the long part) I discovered that they had also bumped me to first class!
I had a lovely meal, a bunch of glasses of vino for free, a comfy restroom to use, and seats with so much room that I couldn’t reach the footrest without stretching. It freaking ROCKED.
I’ve actually rarely had a bad flight experience. I always go very prepared, though, so I don’t see a lot of things as major inconveniences as other people might.
I flew from Greenville/Spartanburg International (snicker) airport to Dayton about 2 months ago. Not only was I the only person in the terminal, I was the only person on the plane. Except for one flight attendant and 2 pilots. Just for me. I felt like a rock star. I sat in the back with the flight attendant who brought me as much free beer and wine as I could drink in 1.5 hours. You see, they were late so the booze was free. We sat and talked and I drank as fast as possible. Right before landing she told me the 2/1 rule (One in the air = 2 on the ground because of the pressurization of the cabin) so by that math I had 8 Budweisers and 48 oz of wine. I could barely walk off the plane.
My wife and I were flying from San Francisco to Toronto on American once. We had to change planes in Chicago.
We were late getting out of San Francisco, and consequently late getting into Chicago. As you may know, O’Hare is shaped like a big letter “A,” and with the late SF flight arriving at a gate at the bottom of one of the legs of the A, and the Toronto flight leaving in about two minutes from the bottom of the other leg, a few of us (not just my wife and I) had to run up one leg and down the other–only to find the gate doors closed, and the soon-to-be-Toronto-bound aircraft being backed away from the gate.
We’d missed our flight home. It was late, about 12:30 a.m., and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one (there were perhaps 12 of us who were trying to make this connection) who had to be at work early the next day. What to do?
The gate agent looked at all of us standing there. He said that we’d have to try to get out on the first flight the next day. We explained that we were all from the late-arriving San Francisco flight, and would have made it if that flight had arrived on time.
He thought about this for a minute, then reached for the phone.
They brought the aircraft back (it hadn’t really gone far; it was still being towed), and let us on. Someone said it was because they didn’t want to go to the trouble and expense of putting us all up, but I like to think it was just because the gate agent was a nice guy.
Well my fiance proposed to me on the plane as our flight was beginning its descent into Gatwick. We told the flight attendants on the return flight how we’d gotten engaged – and they gave us a bottle of champagne. We thought that was really sweet.
A few years ago, my mother and I were flying back to Philadelphia from London using British Airways. When we got our boarding passes at Heathrow, my mother casually mentioned (really!) to the ticket attendant that she had had to sit in the smoking section on a British Airways flight from Rome to Philadelphia a year earlier and had suffered miserably.
Well, the ticket attendant upgraded our tickets from coach to first-class, at no charge, right then and there. We couldn’t believe it! That was the only time in our lives we’ve ever flown first-class, too…it was real comfy up there.
As we were about to depart to a bachelor party in Detroit (from Chicago) via Southwest, we informed the attendant that we had many drink coupons but we were unsure of our ability to use them all because of the shortness of the flight. Ha, ha, funny bachelors.
She winked and headed further up the aisle and we thought no further of it. We were seated in the “Three Row” in the back of the plane. After takeoff, as we were still climbing, three cans of beer rolled one at a time down the center aisle of the plane.
I was on a flight to Chicago once that had nobody in first class. Now, I make it a point to always dress at least business-casual when I fly, and I was probably dressed a little better than that this day, and I still had my ponytail. I remeber making some off-the-cuff remark to a stewardess on the way in the place.
I had settled in when one of the other stewardesses came and sat down next to me and said that I had made an impression on the chief stewardess, and would I like to upgrade to first class. I was taken totally y surprise, but I figured WTF.
So I got to spend the whole 2 1/2 hr. flight in first class by myself talking to a group of stewardesses and munching on those really expensive little Pepperidge Farm cookies. Best flight ever.
Another one was a flight to Las Vegas with my ex-fiancee. Long flight, long waits at the changeovers, and the pilot lined up for the approach wrong, so we had to go around again (another 30 mins.). We were really ready to get off the plane and go to sleep. We were doing that stand-up thing where the plane has landed and everybody’s waiting for the people at the front to get off. I look at the ex and say "I think I’ll just have the chauffer (sp?) pull the limo around and get our stuff. She gives me this really tired look like “Yeah, right asshole”
Little did she know, I had arranged for a limo beforehand. We get off, and there’s a driver in a suit and hat holding a sign with my name on it. That was a great moment.
JetBlue rocks. Simply the best airline I have ever flown, and I’ve flown them all.
Also, business class and first class are lovely on American. We flew to Europe last fall on points, and were either in 1st or business on every leg. Cool toys and amenities, good food, contact attention. We don’t drink, so some of the free stuff was wasted (!) but that’s ok.
Business class on our one BA flight SUCKED. Thank God it was only a short flight.
Virgin used to be really fun when they were new, but I haven’t flown them in years.