In search of friendly skies...

I’m in the midst of planning some air travel, so if you’ll excuse me I need to rant about how much I hate US Airways.

Nearly all of my travel is to visit family near Philly. And for the 30+ years I’ve lived in Arizona, the hassle-free options have been Southwest and the-airline-formerly-known-as-America West. When I lived in Tucson, I either flew AW to Phoenix or Vegas to connect to a nonstop, or SW to Vegas for same (since SW doesn’t have the Tucson-Phoenix route), or a ground shuttle to Phoenix for either. With either, there was no need for sweating connections halfway across the country (although I had at least one AW plane fail to make it to Phoenix). These days I have to take a ground shuttle from Prescott to Phoenix, but those two airlines still offer the only direct flights.

I came to love America West once I got over hating them. They used to have such a lock on the Tucson market that they didn’t care if they treated their passengers like shit. One of my memorable experiences involved my flight from Philly arriving in Phoenix late and me running to make my Tucson connection only to see it pulling away from the gate and stranding me and half a dozen other people. I had thought there was some kind of rule that if your flight had landed they’d hold a connection, but AW apparently didn’t care. Then came one black day 20 or so years ago when Beth & I flew off for a vacation to the Northwest when it seemed that AW’s entire system crashed, flights canceled willy-nilly, and we ended up rescued by Air Alaska and finally going to bed in Bellingham without clean underwear for the next day.

But after that debacle things bounced back. When I called to book a flight (this being before such action was penalized with a surcharge), a friendly agent was always on the line, sometimes even waiving the fee if I had to change my plans. Whenever I called from back east to confirm a return flight, I enjoyed a brief chat over how the weather was in Arizona. Nine years ago when I had to push an itinerary up due to a family emergency, they bent over backward to accommodate me. The AW staff was uniformly friendly, as opposed to the robotic voices you always got on other airlines. And even though I didn’t fly all that much, one year they rewarded me with elite status anyway, and I admit to having been spoiled by those first-class upgrades. America West had won my allegiance.

Then came the merger with USAir. No more chatty agents based in Tempe or Vegas – instead it was offshore support from people whose first language was not English (this for “US” Airways), and whenever I attempted to trade miles for an upgrade it was like talking to a brick wall. A brick wall that spoke another language and pretended to not understand what it was I wanted. If they were going to take away my reward for flying with them, why should I continue to favor them with my patronage? Even the flight attendants were becoming surly, as borne out by news reports of post-merger labor squabbles, and one who’d come from the AW side and whose jump seat was across from me on a flight admitted that things weren’t what they used to be.

And so I migrated to Southwest with its super-friendly agents and crews. Sure, standing in line for a good shot at a seat got a little old before they revised their boarding system, but at least you had a shot. And today they still hand out snacks and bevvies while US is belt-tightening and selling munchies (at least they were shamed into backing off from selling water). But it’s that lack of assigned seating that I assume gives SW their biggest advantage: if you change your flight, there’s no penalty. Sure, you’ll revert to the prevailing fare, that’s to be expected, but there’s no punitive hundred bucks tacked on.

But hard times have hit the airlines, and while US still offers a number of non-stops between PHX and PHL, SW cut back to one each way. Six months ago I flew back to Philly on SW (with a stop in Pittsburgh but no plane change) and booked a return flight on each airline, preferring US’s schedule but deciding to book the SW one-stop as an alternate – because I knew that if I didn’t use it I could bank the fare for a later flight. And since I also knew I’d lose the money I’d spent on the US flight, I went ahead and took it.

Boy, was that ever a mistake.

Several years ago, AW touted a scientifically designed, more efficient boarding system that let people with window seats on earlier so that people in aisle seats didn’t slow things down by having to constantly get up to let them in. Why hadn’t anybody thought of that before? For my return from Philly I had chosen a window seat with that in mind, but I didn’t know that US had thrown science out the window since I’d flown them last. Turns out I was in the next-to-last group to board, which shouldn’t’ve meant any more than having to get past the guy I was surprised to see in my row’s aisle seat (mercifully the middle hadn’t filled...yet); but because US now charged for every piece of checked luggage, the overheads were already jammed with the steamer trunks that laughingly exceeded the dimensions of the test frame at the gate and to which the agents always seemed to turn a blind eye, and I was lucky to squeeze mine into what appeared to be the last available nook. And the whole luggage situation meant that the boarding process was utter chaos and guaranteed that departure from the gate would be delayed. (Once airborne, they also had the flight attendants hawking airline credit cards and discounts for Sky Mall in addition to food, which I suppose was meant to serve as entertainment since they no longer show movies on domestic flights, the thought of which visual distraction on a five-hour flight had been one of my considerations for flying them again.)

So now I’m planning another trip. The first thing I did was book my return flight on SW using the funds from the old unused ticket in order to lock in a fare and schedule. But when I got around to looking at outbound flights, I was irresistibly drawn to the attractiveness of the schedule and fare for one of US’s non-stops, since SW’s non-stop didn’t get in until late at night and the fare for the one-stop direct flight was surprisingly high (probably due to its being heavily booked by people who wanted to get to Philly without flying on US). And so I proceeded to fill in the blanks for a reservation.

But I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

I kept thinking about the overstuffed overheads. And the chaotic boarding. And the surly crews. And the now-empty video screens. And the $6 snack box that didn’t have much more in it than SW gave you for free. And the filled-in seating maps that were already relegating me to the back of the plane more than a month ahead of the flight. And the fact that if I had any need to change my plans, I could kiss most of my money goodbye.

So when I reviewed my options again – including a super-cheapo fare on American that involved a connection at O’Hare, on planes that Seat Guru says have been reconfigured by reducing seat pitch in order to squeeze in two more rows, to even consider which shows you how I feel about US – I came to the conclusion that it was worth the extra money and the brief stop in Pittsburgh to fly Southwest’s friendlier skies.

And as soon as I came to that conclusion, my teeth-gnashing anxieties over flying US Airways totally dissipated.

This concludes my airline rant. Cultural-political-religious postings will resume shortly. If my blood pressure has to go up, it ought to at least be over something beyond my control.