So, atypically for us, we get to Winner Parking at PHL early enough for my wife not to be stressing. There's no wait for the a driver. He unloads our luggage right in front of curb-side check-in and the SWA agent takes our bags right from the curb and we're on our way into the terminal in record time. Security is a little backed up, but not worryingly so.
2390's gate, however, isn't ready for 2390. The inbound flight that was going to depart to Hartford (I think) hadn't arrived. It hadn't arrived by the time the Hartford flight was supposed to depart. So our gate was changed. No biggie - the gates are pretty close together in Terminal E and there really aren't that many of them. So we head down to gate 10 or 12 or whatever it was. Then the gate changes to the other one (10 or 12). Still no biggie. Our plane comes in unusually early -- a good sign we think.
We board slightly ahead of schedule and as we begin to taxi, the captain tells us he's got good news and bad news. The good news was that they got in so early we were able to board early and might get off the ground a little early. The bad news was that they got in early because of the 100mph tailwind from Tampa, which would be a 100mph headwind for us. "We should still make it down there pretty close to the scheduled arrival time, though."
So we taxi for a bit. And then we stop. A fairly long while later, we taxi a bit more. And stop. Finally, he announces that one of the taxiways is out of service and though the weather is OK in Philly, Orlando and in between, there are huge weather problems to the west and planes heading that way have been given priority - and more importantly, those planes didn't have clearance to take off but were on the taxiway between us and the end of the runway, essentially blocking our path. So we weren't given a departure slot for quite some time.... And it took two hours to get to the end of the runway to take off. We got pretty pessimistic when we all heard the engines spool down.
Of course when they spooled back up we all cheered, but he told us not to get too excited, we hadn't taken off yet!
Anyway, he kept us as informed as he could and aside from some nail biting by people with connections, everybody seemed pretty understanding.
In fact, I never really placed the blame with Southwest. It seemed like poor ground traffic management was to blame and as far as I know, SW has no control over that. I thought about contacting the airport for an explanation but I never got around to it and I never called, wrote, or e-mailed Southwest about the delay.
Now for the punchline: We paid $102 and change r/t per person for our tickets. The Friday after we got home, we received a letter of apology from Southwest that I thought said all the right things. And in the envelope were $100 travel vouchers for each of us. Maybe some people complained; I could see an airline offering vouchers to the squeaky wheels. But to send everybody on that flight a $100 voucher.... That's some pretty serious pre-emptive customer service.
Our return flight, on the other hand, departed early, arrived early, had funny flight attendants, and only 42 people on board!
Brett
2390's gate, however, isn't ready for 2390. The inbound flight that was going to depart to Hartford (I think) hadn't arrived. It hadn't arrived by the time the Hartford flight was supposed to depart. So our gate was changed. No biggie - the gates are pretty close together in Terminal E and there really aren't that many of them. So we head down to gate 10 or 12 or whatever it was. Then the gate changes to the other one (10 or 12). Still no biggie. Our plane comes in unusually early -- a good sign we think.
We board slightly ahead of schedule and as we begin to taxi, the captain tells us he's got good news and bad news. The good news was that they got in so early we were able to board early and might get off the ground a little early. The bad news was that they got in early because of the 100mph tailwind from Tampa, which would be a 100mph headwind for us. "We should still make it down there pretty close to the scheduled arrival time, though."
So we taxi for a bit. And then we stop. A fairly long while later, we taxi a bit more. And stop. Finally, he announces that one of the taxiways is out of service and though the weather is OK in Philly, Orlando and in between, there are huge weather problems to the west and planes heading that way have been given priority - and more importantly, those planes didn't have clearance to take off but were on the taxiway between us and the end of the runway, essentially blocking our path. So we weren't given a departure slot for quite some time.... And it took two hours to get to the end of the runway to take off. We got pretty pessimistic when we all heard the engines spool down.
Of course when they spooled back up we all cheered, but he told us not to get too excited, we hadn't taken off yet!Anyway, he kept us as informed as he could and aside from some nail biting by people with connections, everybody seemed pretty understanding.
In fact, I never really placed the blame with Southwest. It seemed like poor ground traffic management was to blame and as far as I know, SW has no control over that. I thought about contacting the airport for an explanation but I never got around to it and I never called, wrote, or e-mailed Southwest about the delay.
Now for the punchline: We paid $102 and change r/t per person for our tickets. The Friday after we got home, we received a letter of apology from Southwest that I thought said all the right things. And in the envelope were $100 travel vouchers for each of us. Maybe some people complained; I could see an airline offering vouchers to the squeaky wheels. But to send everybody on that flight a $100 voucher.... That's some pretty serious pre-emptive customer service.
Our return flight, on the other hand, departed early, arrived early, had funny flight attendants, and only 42 people on board!
Brett
