I just flew several legs on Southwest Airlines for the first time, and it seemed to me that the passengers were much more talkative and social than they are on other airlines that I've flown. Everyone seemed to be talking to their seatmates, and not just folks who were traveling together. Are people happier because they're saving money?

I'd bet Southwest has a bigger percentage of leisure travelers than the others. People are much happier when flying to a location for pleasure than for business.

Hey Lisa:

I've noticed this on Southwest too. I'm not sure why exactly. It might have something to do with the kind of people Southwest attracts. More of the "budget travel" type people. In general, they seem to be more willing to talk to others.

Also, the flight attendants are very talkative and chipper. It might also have something to do with the fact that the flights are usually so short, people are just happy that they're only going to be on the plane for an hour or so.

Business travelers do not consider flying to be a vacation or to be enjoyable.
Flying is an incinvenience (moreso the past year) and a nuisance and a stressor.

Southwest is much more leisure-clientele dominated and many people are flying for vacation. Most probably travel a lot less than most people on more business oriented carriers.

Most business travelers do not want to be bothered by yakkers in the adjacent seats.

Another reason might be that everybody has been standing in line together for 20 minutes or so waiting to board! By the time you board, you already have long time friends.

It's about their boarding procedure!!!

MOOOOoooooooooooo.

FFSWA

I detest SWA.
I'll pay an extra $50-75 to avoid that piece of crap airline.

I detest that crap line they make you stand in. I'd pay $100 more to avoid the crap line.

They are all poor people. Poor people like to talk about nothing.

I hate it too. You end up having to stand in line what seems like 4 different times just to get on the plane and have everyone sitting on the aisle so you have to crawl all over everyone like some sort of idiot. Ugh I hate that. I thought I read a while back that they were getting rid of those stupid plastic tickets and going to assigned seats. Did that not happen?

Hey Business Traveler you are nothing but a pompous ass. I wouldn't want to talk to you either if you were sitting next to me. As for the rest of you anti-Southwest people-give me a break, you are nothing but a bunch of pretentious, uptight assholes who think you are better than the rest of us. (Or are you Vance the disgruntled ex-SW employee who got fired for not doing his job?) Southwest has the best on time record, is actually making a profit and fares are reasonable. The flight crews are actually nice and not the uptight, frigid FA's on United who would crack their faces if they smiled.

Recent southwest flight:

Wow isn't this great, I've never been on a plane before. Do the pilots sit in the front?

Were going to see my mother she is just getting over the gout. Do you know what the gout is?

Are there bathrooms on here? Cool look at this trash bag in the seat? Can I keep this magazine. I hope we can get drinks.

Blab blab blab.

Give me a major airline anyday.

Dan, while I agree and do not like Southwest because of that stupid line, it is considered one of the majors.

I just took Southwest to Las Vegas from Chicago last weekend and I agree with FFSWA. It's a frenzied cattle call and many people who wait in those darned A,B,C lines just start chatting with one another about the stupid lines and continue to talk on the plane. Also, since there are no seat assignments, there are many people who travel together that sit near one another.
We were fortunate enough to grab the exit rows on both legs of the trip but I felt so sorry for some of the elderly couples that couldn't even find seats together. You could see the disappointment on their faces when they boarded the plane and just saw scattered seating.
Everyone was complaining about the process and I will never take Southwest again because of the long lines and lack of seat assignments. Also, we had the most obnoxious drunken idiots that were screaming for the flight attendant to bring them more beers even when we were 5 minutes from landing. Any other airline would have cut them off early due to their disruptive behavior.
I'm so glad this was posted because I've been thinking about why Southwest continues to do this to passengers. I can't imagine that it's more cost effective or efficient and would think the exact opposite.
Southwest is not cheaper most of the time but it just depends on the routes. I would take ATA, National, American, Midway, etc. anyday over my experience on Southwest.

My major problems with Southwest were the lines to board and the dirty planes. Without seat assignments, there were people lining up 45 minutes before departure time to board, which is ridiculous. Also, because of the quick turnaround, the planes aren't cleaned between flights. There are peanuts, pretzels, etc. on floor, and the bathrooms are dirty. While I did get a cheap internet fair on Southwest, I would rather pay a few dollars more for another airline with assigned seats in the future.

It's quite interesting the number of negative statement that show up regarding Southwest. Yes, the line-up thing is a bit annoying. But they save a lot of money by not assigning seats (passing on the savings in low fares).

Also, even though most of you seem to hate Southwest, they are one of a VERY few US airlines making money right now. It seems even though people hate them, they will suffer them to save money.

Additionally, Southwest is great even if you don't fly them, because their low fares force the other airlines to lower their fares for the same routes.

In my opinion, I believe the days of the full service major airlines are numbered. The very rich (and in the future, even the decently rich) will fly on private jets (or fractional ownership jets). Everyone else will be on Southwest or other similar low-fare airlines (Jetblue, AirTran, Spirit, etc). We all hate the lining up and the lack of service, but we all love the low fares.

Talk about lack of service! 9-18 we flew AA from TPA to Albuquerque. That was over half a day of travel, two legs each way. All we were served in that time was 2 bags of trail mix by less than happy flight attendants. Same on the return flight.

9-11 we flew Southwest TPA-->PVD, about a 2 hour flight. All we got were...two bags of trail mix but at least the FAs were cheery in their delivery!

Flying has changed, corners are being cut any place they can, but if you have to put up with it, my personal preferene would be to at least do it in a congenial atmosphere!

The only difference (our planes were clean and seats wide, perhaps wider than AAs) was that AA had assigned seating. Period. And in my case, that didn't work to my advantage either, as I ended up in the center seat all 4 legs, despite having made the reservation in early August. Oh yes...the only person that was chatty on any of these flights was the guy on the AA flight on our return trip. There was no sleeping or reading next to him.....

There was an intersting article in the Tampa paper this morning about jets hopping to different runways on their approaches and sometimes takeoffs. They are supposed to use one which takes them primarily over the water, but that runway also happens to be a distance from the gates located on the other side of the terminal. There's a shorter runway on that side of the airport, which has more of a land (homeowner) approach and is not supposed to be used as much because of noise complaints. According to the airport who has been tracking this for the past year, pilots are increasingly requesting permission to use the shorter runway on the otherside of the airport, saying they would otherwise be following another plane too closely, and in checking which flights are making this request, they found that something like 90% of them, lo and behold, were airlines whose gates just happened to be on the side of the terminal with that short, over land approach. Cut down on taxi time= money savings for the airline.

James' assessment of what is to come is probably right on, and we'll all be happy just to have a bag of trail mix thown at us! AA certainly could not have given their coach passengers any less service had they tried!

As a business traveler that makes 4-6 business flights monthly on Southwest, all I can say is thank God more people don't. Why would they want to participate in the best frequent flyer program in history? I receive a free flight voucher that is tranferable to anyone I give it to every 3 weeks or so. I have so many free trips that I could not possibly use them all without giving them to friends and family. My parents are seeing more of this country together in the last year than they have in their lifetime, All because of a business traveler that prefers to fly SWA. Yes, they can be corney at times and once they pretty much scared the s*^% out of me when the opened the door and yelled GET OUT !!!! but you take it all in stride and realize that the company is very successful because they let their employees be themselves and think for themselves. Oh yeah, did I mention they are the only airline that I can rely on to be on time.

Bob:

I'm a Southwest booster also. However, their on-time record has been slipping of late. In fact, for the month of July 2002 (the latest on-time report), Southwest had only the 7th best on-time record of the ten largest airlines in the US.

http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/reports/atcr02.htm

Also, of the 13 flights in the month of July which arrived late 80% of the time or more, Southwest had 11 of them!!!! For example, flight 1428 from MDW-CLE ran 31 times in July. It was late 27 of those 31 times (87.1%). The median late time for that flight was 32 mins late. And, because they schedule only a 20-30 min turnaround, the next flight is almost guaranteed to be late. In fact, the continuation of flight 1428 from CLE-BWI was also late 27 of 31 times.

Of course, the security regulations have hurt SWA. They expect to turn around their planes in 20-30 mins. They have to get everyone off the previous flight, do the random screens and board the plane all in 20-30 mins. Other airlines usually take about 50-60 mins to do this. Also, passengers complained that if they got chosen for the screening, they lost their place in line for boarding. So, SWA started waiting for the entire boarding to be randomnly screened before boarding the next group (again, taking more time). I really hope they don't slip like this any more, because their on-time record has been one of their strongest points.

Olive I recently returned from a first class RT flight on AA which cost the company (not mine, theirs) over $1000, and what did I get for food on the 2 flights? Nada. Nunc. Zippo.
Free wine and beer, but no food.
Sad.

Maybe the airlines should go back to the OLD days when in coach class you wanted food, you were charged extra. When buying ticket you voiced your preference. Or is everyone on this site to young to remember "the good old days"