Originally Posted by
melissaru
You'll like this one...
Two weeks ago, flying RIC-ATL, I'm in the boarding area. It's about 45 minutes until takeoff, but there are no GAs.
About 10 minutes later, two GAs show up at the boarding door - not the desk -- and make the announcement that they will start boarding in two minutes.
I take that opportunity to go over and check on the status of elite upgrades.
The FA looks at me and says, "Oh, we don't do that here. You need to go to customer service to get that done."
This is probably due to the fact that some of the Southwest/AirTran agents at small stations are now outsourced. In RIC the ramp and "ops" agents (ops agents are the ones who conduct the boarding process) are actually employees of a Delta subsidiary. Customer service agents (the ones at the gate desk and at the ticket counter) in RIC are unionized Southwest employees, all former AirTran but not many of them left.