Two more young women claim mistreatment on Southwest

by Grant Martin on

I officially feel bad for Southwest Airlines. In the wake of the internet ruckus when two young women flying from Florida to California got booted off a round trip flight for what they say was “being too pretty”, another two women from San Diego have spoken up and cried foul.

The sisters say that they were “unfairly treated and humiliated” on a flight between San Diego and Las Vegas, during which they were apparently “obnoxious and annoying,” according to the SW incident report. During one of the confrontations after a flight attendant refused the option to serve them alcohol, one of them allegedly claimed “I work for the TSA and you will be taken care of.” The women deny this.

In either a retaliatory or precautionary measure, the women were escorted off the flight upon arrival, after which they were questioned for a couple of hours and released.

What I find most interesting is that they’ve stayed mum about this entire affair and hadn’t even contacted customer service until a few days ago. I think that after the too-pretty-to-fly incident, they decided that it was their turn for the spotlight.

Apparently they’re currently investigating legal action.

Check out Southwest Airline’s official blog: Nuts About Southwest.

Update: Southwest comments on the fiasco.

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Bump season is upon us

by Grant Martin on

Spring break is upon us, ladies and gentlemen, which means that bump season is getting kicked into high gear. With the sudden spike in demand, airlines are going to be overbooking flights left and right, which means that casual travelers like you and I can take advantage of the system and start collecting vouchers for taking later flights.

Usually, the spring break bump season lasts through the entire month of March and into early April. Things die down or 6 – 8 weeks or so after that, then summertime travel hits and bumps increase in volume again. Bumptracker has some legacy data on this.

So if you’re flying in the next few weeks, take a look at seatcounter to see if your flight is oversold or near full. Plugging in your date and airline, you can tell if this is the case if there are all zeroes or mostly low numbers next to your flight. You can also ask at the gate or call the airline before departure; they’re obligated to tell you if the flight is oversold.

In case you’re worried about the ramifications of being bumped off a regularly scheduled flight, fear not — here at Gadling we’ve created a thorough guide to bumping, what it means, how to do it and how to work it to your advantage.

Check it out here.

Get out there and get kicked off some flights!

Crazy cross-wind landing caught on video

by Grant Martin on

If you’ve ever been on your final approach during landing and noticed the plane shifting around laterally, you’ve experienced cross-winds. Usually this phenomenon is mitigated by proper runway placement, which is why you’ll usually see runways going in different directions at larger airports. But if the winds shift or if the airport only has one runway, pilots will occasionally be forced to land in a heavy crosswind.

Kent can tell you more, but to cut to the chase, wind blowing on the side of the airplane during landing is not an ideal environment. It makes it really difficult to land. Check out this video of an A320 landing in heavy cross-winds in Hamburg. Scary huh?

Ticket prices to England just went down

by Grant Martin on

I’m not sure if there’s a secret sale going on or someone at US Airways messed up the feed today, but ticket prices to the UK for summertime travel just went down. This means that instead of paying 1200$ for that ticket from Chicago to London you now might be able to get away with about 600$. Quite an excellent price for summertime travel.

The fare sale seems to be centered solely around US Airways routes between the United States and London (LON) and Manchester (MAN) with travel between Monday and Thursday. If you’d like a dandy tool to check availability, use this Farecompare link to view a calendar. Plug in your favorite airport in the departure box to check if the fare is available from your city.

London not where you want to go? Consider booking your transatlantic leg into London then booking a separate ticket from there to your final destination (it’s called nesting). You can either go through a canonical search engine like Kayak or Opodo, or try your luck at a Low Cost Carrier via flylc.com.

Happy summer travels.

Double booking the same flight by mistake

by Jamie Rhein on

One problem with booking flights online without talking to an actual person is that mistakes can be made without anyone catching an error. This Monday my brother ended up with two American Airline tickets for exactly the same flight.

My father booked a ticket for my brother Monday morning. I helped my brother book a ticket Monday night. (This was after talking with my dad on Saturday and playing phone tag with my brother. None of us live near each other.) The whys of how this happened are not as important as the fact that my brother had two plane tickets–one on his credit card and one on my dad’s. Since I helped create the snafu, I felt obligated to help rectify the situation and called American Airlines myself. Of course, customer service cannot be accessed through the phone tree. I called the number that led to reservations and was eventually kicked to a real person after I didn’t respond to the questions of the voice-automated system.

The real person pleasantly told me that since both payments had gone through, my brother did indeed have two tickets, although he could rebook one of them for $100. I sputtered, “But they’re for exactly the same flight!” She saw my point, but told me how to get in touch with customer service since her supervisor told her there was nothing to be done through reservations.

Undaunted, my father called the reservation number by using my system to connect to a real person. His person cancelled the ticket my brother had bought. There wasn’t a problem at all. Supposedly, my brother now has only one ticket which is all he needs. When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again–even with an airline. You might get lucky.