Southwest Airlines - ugh!

I used to be a big fan of Southwest Airlines; low fares, good routes, friendly staff - it was a winning combination for me. But lately my travels have taken me on routes largely served by JetBlue. Now, I can't say that JetBlue is fabulous, but the TVs in every seat are a tremendous help for boring flights. I used to be able to read on flights, but now I either sleep or watch TV. I'm not sure why that happened.

Steven and I booked tickets to see our good friends in Nashville after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, JetBlue doesn't have a sensible route from south Florida to Nashville, but Southwest does.

My big gripe about Southwest has always been the seating deal. I understand their claim that by not issuing assigned seats they can pass along some savings to their customers, but I get all stressed out during the boarding process trying to fight for a good seat. With other airlines, I don't worry because my seat has already been assigned to me and hopefully I was able to get an exit row or a seat that isn't in the middle of two big dudes.

Southwest has recently changed their boarding process, but only slightly. Before it was a free-for-all, where whomever got to the gate first was the first one on the plane. Now, you can check-in 24 hours before your flight and you are assigned the A,B,C status when you print your boarding pass, but the twist is that they have added numbers to the passes to give you a defined position in the boarding line. We didn't see this helping a whole lot when we left Florida, but on the way back from Nashville the people were crazy about making sure they were in the correct numerical order to board. Personally, I think this is worse than before because now everyone has to scramble around in line to make sure they are in the correct order. Its a messy process.

To make matters worse, our flight was delayed almost two hours on the way home because of "mechanical problems". Once we all got on the plane, Steven and I were towards the end of the group for boarding, so we got crappy seats in the back of the plane. I know that neither of us are skinny, but with the two of us in our seats (Steven against the window and me in the middle), neither of us could put our arms down. No kidding. The seats were so small and cramped that we spent the entire 90 minute flight twisted at an odd angle. It was so ridiculous that I could only laugh. Lucky for us, the plane touched down in Tampa to let some people off, so we were able to snag an exit row where we weren't so cramped.

I know America is getting fatter and we are certainly no exception, but those seats on Southwest are really small (at least in the last row, where we sat two times during this trip). Personally, I am willing to pay more to fly on a plane with slightly larger seats than to be cramped in an uncomfortable position for the duration of a flight.

I should probably just shut up and lose some weight and I won't have these problems in the future!