Stumpy said:
I am an average sized guy and was in the middle seat. The guy next to me was average. The seat was so cramped I had to hold my shoulders in the entire flight. About 2 inches of clearance between my knees and the seat in front, I couldn't even reach my carry on bag because I didn't have enough room.
Respectfully, information like seat width and pitch are available on seatguru.com (and I think there are other, similar sites but offhand don't know them). But since the staff was able to seat you with your wife, couldn't you have leaned toward her instead of sitting all scrunched up? As for general discomfort, well, your plywood seat on AirTran sounds similar to my last Delta flight, although the seats didn't seem dirty - so uncomfortable seats aren't restricted to low-cost airlines.
Flight was delayed in air 1 hour (understandable, probably due to weather), but the crew never told us why. Very unfriendly staff.
Could also have been ground traffic. Respectfully, though, what point would there have been in telling the passengers why there was a delay? Was it going to change the amount of extra time spent in the air? Any delay for any reason counts against the airlines' on-time statistics - they really don't LIKE to arrive late.
Return flight - Again, wife and I split up upon booking. Agent gladly re-unites us. Apparently, that is a little tactic Airtran uses to get you to pay the additional 6 dollars per seat.
Sigh... no. AirTran is a low-cost airline that charges extra for MANY things formerly taken for granted. You want a low-cost airline, great - but it's the passenger's responsibility to know what is and is not included in the fare. AirTran charges $6 per passenger in each direction to select seats prior to 24 hours before departure. At that time, however, when passengers are able to check in online, thos who opted NOT to pay in advance can select seats from what remains available. I'm relatively certain their website (and their live agents, when booked on the phone) don't hide this information in any way. Just for the record, United - a legacy carrier - also charges extra for many of its seats when chosen in advance (or even aboard the plane, I think?). JetBlue has some seats with extra legroom for which they charge $20-$40 per direction. It's not unreasonable to expect the passenger to know what they're buying, what it does and doesn't include, and not blame the airline for their own lack of advance planning - especially on a return flight, since by then the passenger knows the airline's rules and conditions.
However, the "brand new" bag was a replacement from one previously destroyed by Airtran (at the time I chalked it up to random occurrence), but it is now sans one wheel, has broken components and disgusting, oily stains on it. The other bag had a huge gash right through the cloth material into the interior of the bag. Seriously, it looked as if they TRIED to destroy them. Service assistants were useless and cited the whole "cannot be responsible for damaged luggage" story.
It sounds like one, if not both, pieces fell off the luggage cart at some point and were run over by it. I don't know for sure who handles the luggage at this point - whether it's the individual airlines or the airports themselves. But if you attempted to make a claim while still AT the airport, AirTran's "cannot be responsible for damaged luggage" is baloney.
Oh, and yes, they moved our flights frequently, often by a couple of hours and sometimes by as little as one minute.
You're (every "you", not just the quoted poster) aware that these changes are not necessarily the airline's decision, right? Yes, many times it's due to their own scheduling or even routing changes - but the airport also controls how many flights can arrive/depart every hour, and the airlines need to schedule their flights to comply.
If I had a car big enough for all of us I would just drive but my car only holds 7 and there is 9 of us going. 
That won't work for us.
