Thank you Southwest Airlines for Saving Our Cruise!

[tip]

We have just returned from a fabulous eight day cruise to the Eastern Caribbean aboard the Jewel of the Seas. We made our reservations over a year ago.

 

On Friday, February 22nd I wasn't so sure that we would make it. We have had a really difficult winter in New England. I have used my snowblower at least nine times this winter--more that the previous three or four winters combined. Although we always fly out a day early, we almost didn't make it this year. We had a 4:55 p.m. flight out of Manchester, New Hampshire to Fort Lauderdale with a layover in Philly. Friday the 22nd saw some pretty nasty weather in the northeast. I checked on line just before going to the airport and saw that our flight was cancelled! I called the 800 number for Southwest Airlines and after ten minutes of recorded commercials I finally spoke to a human being. She told me that although flights were leaving out of Manchester, airports in Philly, New York, and Newark were closed due to snow and ice. When I explained my situation about the ship leaving Saturday she could only suggest that we show up at the airport on Saturday morning and hope to get on standby. Right! That was the beginning of school vacation week in New Hampshire and all flights were booked solid for weeks!

 

"The One Who Must Be Obeyed" suggested that we still drive to the airport and speak to a real live human being. Needless to say, the airport was in just a little bit of the chaos mode with the number of flights delayed and cancelled. We observed two businessmen in front of us attempting to bully the ticket agent into getting them on a flight to no avail and then proceeding to blame Southwest for the weather conditions. We decided to take a different tact when we got to the counter and expressed our dismay to the ticket agent about the way she was being treated and then being the good Irishman that I am told her of our tale of woe and the fact that we stood to miss the cruise that we had planned for over a year thanks to the poor weather conditions. I told her that we were willing to travel to the west coast as long as we could get to Fort Lauderdale to make our ship on the following day. This lady was fantastic! She spent close to fifteen minutes on the computer trying to come up with various alternatives. Finally she solved the problem. She got us on a flight to Baltimore which then went on to Tampa. It would mean would having to wait in Manchester for another six hours and stay over in Tampa until we could catch a flight to Fort Lauderdale on Saturday morning. Naturally we said yes!!

 

We arrived in Tampa and by the time we got our luggage it was well past 1 a.m. We have never slept in an airline terminal, but we found some comfy chairs in the shopping area and spent four hours cat napping. We had coffee as soon as the vendors opened and caught our flight to Fort Lauderdale and were on the ship by noon and had a terrific cruise.

 

Thank you Southwest Airlines for making it work!!!

[Purplehaze21]

Wonderful story! So glad she got you out and on your way. Goes to show you, treat people the way you want to be treated. I would e-mail or call the airline and make sure they know how wonderful the employee was. Glad you had a great cruise!

[sully_mn]

Congrats......and the weather last week could not have been better for your/our cruise!

 

My brother-in-law and family were supposed to fly Continental from MSP to FLL via Newark that same Friday. They worked the phones the night before using the same tact you did and were able to get four seats on an NWA flight via DET. Kindness goes a long way. :)

[WhiteSoxFan]

That goes back to old adage, "you can catch more flies with sugar than vinegar". It pays to be nice and respectful to the people you are trying to get to help you.

[smilingrl]

That's a lovely story. Glad to hear your cruise was wonderful, too. We were probably on your Tampa-FLL flight in the morning, and I know we sailed beside you for a while on the Enchantment. It WAS a great week.

[megr1125]

glad you had a great experience....

 

i had a different problem....i picked up my bags in TPA after flying MSY-HOU-TPA...when i got to the hotel, my clothes were wet! went back to the terminal....and another person was yelling at the agent for losing their luggage (like it was her fault) and saying she was going t osue since they got 2 parking tickets!:rolleyes:

 

i politely said my clothes inside my bag got wet, probably on the ramp someplace....she offered dry cleaning...i said how about 5 bucks and i will do my laundry at the hotel.....(and i said she shouldn't have had to be subjected to verbal abuse)....

 

3 minutes later, check chased at the ticket counter,and i was back on the way to the hotel!

[Honey's Gal]

I am so glad you made your cruise. I have always believed that being polite is a much better way to go. I have friends that are ticket agents and I love to hear the stories they tell about those obnoxious "expected" passengers to be.

 

I believe those of us from the Northeast should fly out the next day, especially during the winter. Not worth the stress to go the same day

[cruisinisforme]

They did something similar for me. I was going on the one night freedom cruise, which was the first weekend in june. Now I live in the northeast too but in a million years I never would have thought weather would be a factor in june.

 

Well there were storms up and down the east coast and they cancelled our flight to FLL. The ticket agent was wonderful to us too, she eventually got us on a flight to orlando and we had to drive down to miami, which was ok as long as we still made it.

 

I have been pretty faithful to southwest for a number of years now, and after that more so, but after hearing your story now I will still continue to use them for many more flights.

[Rancher Dave]

Amazing how being nice tends to work so much better.

 

Not involving an airline but I am working to fix an issue that came up unexpectedly...and I found that being nice to the lady helping me got me a lot more help in not just resolving the one issue but in getting everything done needed to take care of the problem and get the item booked.

 

I know the person helping me did not make the mistake and honestly is doing everything she can to resolve the situation.

 

Most folks working for many of the airlines in CSR positions which included check in and gate agents do want their PAX to make it where they want to be on time...bonuses in it for them at Continental for instance...so being nice to them does not force them to be defensive and enforce every company rule. Nice can get rules bent, did for me when I had to travel for medical emergency in family....changing planes in Houston (I know that is odd...but long story on that one) I was to immediately connect to Tampa but got CSR at Continental to rebook for next morning so I could go home and get more appropriate clothes for being around a hospital...I had with me only work clothes from offshore drilling work...not appropriate for a hospital...we were nice got what we wanted and Continental gets Kudos for helping me!!!

 

 

Glad you had good luck with Southwest! I found 99% of the time with Southwest if I was nice and had a reasonable request it was given to me. Just never have gotten a 1st class upgrade from Southwest though...:D

[CVU]

glad you had a great experience....

 

i had a different problem....i picked up my bags in TPA after flying MSY-HOU-TPA...when i got to the hotel, my clothes were wet! went back to the terminal....and another person was yelling at the agent for losing their luggage (like it was her fault) and saying she was going t osue since they got 2 parking tickets!:rolleyes:

 

i politely said my clothes inside my bag got wet, probably on the ramp someplace....she offered dry cleaning...i said how about 5 bucks and i will do my laundry at the hotel.....(and i said she shouldn't have had to be subjected to verbal abuse)....

 

3 minutes later, check chased at the ticket counter,and i was back on the way to the hotel!

 

The only way to help prevent that is to line your suitcase with laundry bags etc. then the rain won't soak in as much to dampen your clothes. Or a hard shelled suit case.

 

Yes, it sure pays to be nice to people, it gets you no where blaming them for something they had no control over.

[WhenIsOurNextCruise]

Great story and so glad it worked out. One of my favorite Southwest stories involved a man arguing with the gate check-in attendant about why he couldn't get on an earlier flight. She explained that he could but he would have to pay for the full fare as he was currently booked on a cheaper fare. He was irate, saying it was just stupid to let an empty seat go on the early flight while he had to wait for a later flight and he demanded she explain why SWA would do that. She had the perfect answer: "Because Herb wants it that way". Those were the days when Herb Kelleher was still at the reins.

 

That was pretty much the end of the conversation and I always love an answer that definitively ends an argument.

[bubbie617]

To the OP -

 

You should write a manual on how to behave in rough situations. You handled the whole thing so beautifully. I'm very glad that the ticket agent was able to help you get to your cruise and I hope you had a wonderful time.

 

I always say that it's all in the attitude. You could have been irate and a bully, but that would have gotten you nowhere. You chose to be civil and solicitous and they helped you accomplish what you needed to. Good for you!

[Willbcruisin]

LOVE Southwest.......They go above and beyond...we had some close one's and they have ALWAYS been professional, kind and accomodating!

 

Being from New England we always fly a day early no matter what time of year!!

 

Happy Cruising!

[megr1125]

The only way to help prevent that is to line your suitcase with laundry bags etc. then the rain won't soak in as much to dampen your clothes. Or a hard shelled suit case.

 

Yes, it sure pays to be nice to people, it gets you no where blaming them for something they had no control over.

 

 

yup! you are correct.....never thought about it in all my years of flying!..now we sandwich everything in plastic.

[Jungle Jane]

We have just returned from a fabulous eight day cruise to the Eastern Caribbean aboard the Jewel of the Seas. We made our reservations over a year ago.

 

On Friday, February 22nd I wasn't so sure that we would make it. We have had a really difficult winter in New England. I have used my snowblower at least nine times this winter--more that the previous three or four winters combined. Although we always fly out a day early, we almost didn't make it this year. We had a 4:55 p.m. flight out of Manchester, New Hampshire to Fort Lauderdale with a layover in Philly. Friday the 22nd saw some pretty nasty weather in the northeast. I checked on line just before going to the airport and saw that our flight was cancelled! I called the 800 number for Southwest Airlines and after ten minutes of recorded commercials I finally spoke to a human being. She told me that although flights were leaving out of Manchester, airports in Philly, New York, and Newark were closed due to snow and ice. When I explained my situation about the ship leaving Saturday she could only suggest that we show up at the airport on Saturday morning and hope to get on standby. Right! That was the beginning of school vacation week in New Hampshire and all flights were booked solid for weeks!

 

"The One Who Must Be Obeyed" suggested that we still drive to the airport and speak to a real live human being. Needless to say, the airport was in just a little bit of the chaos mode with the number of flights delayed and cancelled. We observed two businessmen in front of us attempting to bully the ticket agent into getting them on a flight to no avail and then proceeding to blame Southwest for the weather conditions. We decided to take a different tact when we got to the counter and expressed our dismay to the ticket agent about the way she was being treated and then being the good Irishman that I am told her of our tale of woe and the fact that we stood to miss the cruise that we had planned for over a year thanks to the poor weather conditions. I told her that we were willing to travel to the west coast as long as we could get to Fort Lauderdale to make our ship on the following day. This lady was fantastic! She spent close to fifteen minutes on the computer trying to come up with various alternatives. Finally she solved the problem. She got us on a flight to Baltimore which then went on to Tampa. It would mean would having to wait in Manchester for another six hours and stay over in Tampa until we could catch a flight to Fort Lauderdale on Saturday morning. Naturally we said yes!!

 

We arrived in Tampa and by the time we got our luggage it was well past 1 a.m. We have never slept in an airline terminal, but we found some comfy chairs in the shopping area and spent four hours cat napping. We had coffee as soon as the vendors opened and caught our flight to Fort Lauderdale and were on the ship by noon and had a terrific cruise.

 

Thank you Southwest Airlines for making it work!!!

 

Nice! We also fly out of Manchester, NH and for our cruise we skidded into the parking lot on sheer black ice, we were so sure our flight was going to be delayed...it wasn't thank goodness, but we were going down a day ahead so it would have been ok.

Nice to hear a happy ending :)

[Littlebrookfarm]

We also flew in the nasty weather that weekend Sat am out of Albany NY - early flight was delayed but the Delta agent booked us on a 'back-up' connecting flight out of Atlanta in case we didn't make the original connection. We missed it of course, and when we went to the gate for the 'back-up' flight in Atlanta there must have been 25 people there trying to get on that flight to Miami and they printed our boarding passes with no problem. We even got seats together except for my dad - he got bumped to first class :) They got us there - however our luggage didn't make it since they put too much fuel on the plane in Albany - it was either take off people or take off luggage. The one bag out of 7 that made it had the shorts, t-shirts, swim suits, and toiletries and we used our travel insurance to buy other clothing & necessities until the other bags caught up with us. All in all - we were just happy to be onboard & we got some nice new duds to boot compliments of the insurance!!

[Arizona Cruz Chic]

What a great story.....I've always believed that you get more fly's with honey than vinegar. ;)

 

***

[berbet]

We always fly SWA out of Manchester. Their crew there is so great. I'm glad that they were able to help you get to your cruise on time!

[Alexis]

=tip;13631066]Thank you Southwest Airlines for making it work!!!

 

 

It is nice to read a good thing about airlines and what they did for their passengers. I am so glad you made your cruise.

Coming from NY I know what snow can do to ones plans. ;)

[Spurs Fans]

Glad you enjoyed our Texas hospitality!! Southwest is the best!

[Lorie]

So glad everything worked out for you. It's nice to hear the positive's!

[silentbob007]

Whenever I've dealt with Southwest, their personel have seemd to be hardworking, honest, and straightforward. Usually there is not any BS about how things work or what is happening. Much appreciated.

 

When I flew them in December, I was worried about my flight because of a winter storm warning. I was using two free tickets (rapid rewards) to get to FLL from IND, and I called about switching flights. The lady on the phone worked with me, and warned me of the alternatives (other weather warnings, etc). At the very end, I asked the question I had dreaded (and probably should have asked first) ... how much will this change cost? The answer ... a chuckle and an assurance that there are no change-fees when the airports in question are facing inclement weather. Good to know.

[Tweety1961]

It always amazes me how nasty some can be, especially with the weather, like the agents can help that. I love watching the Southwest show, Airline on the A&E channel. People can be so rude. Southwest is the best. How many other airlines credit you when you rebook and the price goes down, or let you rebook without a $75-100 fee? We recently rebooked a flight to Arizona, the weekend we rebooked to came to $256 less than what we paid, and they gave us a credit, which we used for another flight somewhere else

[ericdetwiler]

This is exactly why I fly Southwest. Great post!

[Rudi610]

Did you send a letter to Southwest praising the actions of their agent? If not, do so. I will bet that you get a response, not to mention the employee will get recognized by the company. I used to fly Southwest a lot when working in a previous job. But one flight stands out in my mind. I was flying back from Illinois after visiting my grandmother, for what turned out to be the last time (she was diagnosed with cancer). The flight home was difficult knowing that was probably going to be the last time I saw her. The flight crew on that flight had a very positive attitude, cracking jokes and keeping upbeat (after a long day I'm sure). They knew nothing of my situation, but their attitude made a difficult flight for me more bearable. After that experience, I wrote a letter to the company and I received a response from Colleen (who was president of Southwest at that time). She thanked me for the letter and made comments on some of the things I said in the letter (so I know she read it and this was not just an automatic form letter).

 

So, if you have not already done so, write a letter to Southwest praising the efforts of their employee (even if you did not get her name). The emmployee, or at least their work location will receive recognition for a job well done.