United747

A few days ago I flew my first flight on WN. I have stayed away from them for obvious reasons (lack of aspirational awards, open seating, etc.) but I booked last minute and my preferred carrier, UA, was asking about $275 for ORD-MSP and WN Business Select was $235. So I said, “What the heck, might as well try them”. There are going to be no pictures involved, but I will try my best to describe my adventure.

I cruised through my final test this semester downtown and hopped on the L towards Roosevelt and then down to MDW. Just as an FYI, standing out at the L stop in only a sports coat in 0 degree F weather is not fun! I was originally booked on the 3 pm flight but when I got into the terminal after the long walk from the MDW L stop, I used a self-service machine to change to the noon flight. On the 3 pm flight I had A03 as my position and I snagged A09 with the SDC to the new flight. Luckily, my pre check carried over, but there seemed to be very few people in line that knew what pre check was. Everyone was trying to take off light coats, belts, shoes, and even one person tried to bring a 2 liter of pepsi through the pre check line!

Once through, I purchased a water and the WSJ and sat near the gate until we were called to board. One side note, there seemed to be a medical emergency, Chicago PD and FD were at the gate and made their way onboard right as the plane made it to the gate. The gentleman seemed ok, just some
motion sickness.

Boarding was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, all of the A positions were called to line up and the Business Select passengers were called to board first. This next part really through me off, I like being able to know exactly where I am going to sit, but just walking onboard and choosing a seat seemed weird to me. I was able to get an exit row seat though, but the person in the middle was, how should I say this, larger than usual. I really only got about ¾ of the seat and it was pretty uncomfortable, and with me having a little bit of a cold, I was not the happiest camper.

The service inflight was very good, I used my drink coupon, free with a BS fare, for a vitamin water which was really good, and I also had about 3 packages of peanuts. We were on an Evolve 737-700 which had wifi, so I used my Blackberry to track our flight. I was getting worried once we started our decent that my ear would start to hurt a lot because of the cold, but, in the end, it did not and I can hear perfectly fine. We landed about right ontime and I made my way down to wait for my ride home.

At the end of the day, WN is not my kind of airline, but it was not as bad as I thought. I used to play rugby (hooker), and I imagined a scrum when I thought of boarding. It was a lot more civilized that that! But, I am still dedicated to United and would rather take the L out to ORD and relax in the UA Club and have my assigned aisle seat. I can definitely see the attraction to WN if one is either near a hub, is not elite on another carrier, or books last minute, otherwise I really do not see the advantage.

Thanks for reading,
United747