An Airline Who’s Quick On The Tarmac As Well As In The Air

It’s been quite a while since I had made a one-day business trip to another city. Of course that always means getting up at the crack of dawn and getting to bed very late the same night with a whole lot sandwiched in between.

Yesterday I had to fly to Spokane to take care of some pressing things, so I decided to make the trek in just a day. Southwest Airlines has a senior fare (cheapest fare out there) that you can buy with no advance purchase, so I took advantage of it the day before.

The low, easily available fare had, this time at least, offset the airline’s lousy boarding and seating procedures (I HATE waiting in a line to fight for a seat location someone else likely has already taken).

I arrived, finally, at Seatac about 7:45 a.m. for a 9:00 flight to GEG. Twenty five minutes later I had skated through check-in and security and was waiting for the plane to arrive. Being Southwest, the plane arrived exactly on time. Wow, I thought, this is great.

Until, at 9:05 after we had boarded, the captain announced that we would be going nowhere on this particular aircraft due to a sensor malfunction in the right engine.

Usually, this would send me to “ruinsville”. Reason is, I'm aware that most airlines would take at least two or three hours to get you re-routed and to your destination, and I had a late morning meeting.

But Southwest to the rescue.

After we deplaned, they simply moved us over two gates, and we waited ten minutes for the plane from Sacramento to arrive. Normally, it would turn around and go back to Sacto, but because there were far more passengers waiting to go to Spokane than back south, they did what I think NO other airline could do on the spur of the moment.

They made a decision to put us on the arriving Sacramento plane and then sent us off to Spokane within 20 minutes. They called up mechanics from Oakland to fix the disabled plane, and put the southbound passengers on the next plane going south, hardly missing a beat in the days’ routine.

It was poetry in motion by an airline. And the quickest thinking and acting by airline operations people I’ve ever seen. We arrived in Spokane barely 30 minutes later than originally scheduled – an unbelievable accomplishment.

KUDOS TO SOUTHWEST, as they “saved” my day. I even returned home feeling rested because I accomplished what I had set out to do, even though it was a long day.