It seems in the past few years of writing
"HOliday Travel" related stories I've seen the numbers grow... but people are spreading
out when they go (some a few days before, some afterwards.) I hope Christmas Day is
less crowded for you NJ David. (It could be,
a lot of people like me will be making Holiday gift deliveries.)

NJ DAVID: The Pacific Coast area is beautiful country. Friends drove me through there a few years ago. If you are renting a car, avoid Alamo (you wouldn't want to spend part of that special time on a car rental line!) Please report on it and HAPPY & SAFE TRAVELS!!!

Hopefully you have found a way to earn FF miles. I try anywhere and anyway I can!

Jaws43... the Cat Cop will pardon your OMNI
entry. It's travel related and it could give other travelers some good vacation ideas. CATMAN

Catman---I have noticed in a couple of your post, that you keep referring to the boarding procedure of Southwest.
Have you ever flown Southwest?

My experience has been that their boarding procedure is more orderly than American or Delta. You are given a colored plastic boarding card, and board in groups of 30. Boarding cards 1-30 may be red, 31-60 green, and so forth. Unless the gate agent is colored blind, it is hard to board out of order.

I agree their boarding areas and planes are crowded. Like all airlines, they try to fill every seat.

Dansil -- we fly WN (affectionately known in this household as SouthWorst) lots! We can't stand our "hometown" airline -- AmericaWorst!

The key to flying WN is to get there early -- the gate agents usually appear 1 hour prior to flight time. Get an early card (1-30) and be there when the plane arrives to queue up in the cattlecar line...

The problem is that there are ALWAYS people with boarding cards numbered 91-120 standing right smack square in the middle of the aisle, immediately behind the red velvet rope. Inevitably, these idiots have six house sized carry-ons. No amount of kind words (and sometimes not-so-kind words) can get them to get with the program and get the begeebees out of the way.

Orderly, yes -- if you're in the first boarding group. After that, a free-for-all for overhead space, seats, etc...

onefreeman---I have never witnessed a passenger on Southwest or any other airline allowed to board with six carry-on items!
Southwest has the Bin-Hog units to measure the size of all carry-ons, which they strickly enforce.
As far as passengers blocking the jet-way, do we not see this with all airlines? How about overhead space, is the problem limited to Southwest?

Dansil... maybe I should not judge Southwest
until I've flown it. But I've seen the boarding process get out of control on S-W
flights in Vegas, SFO, San Diego (where people were screaming that they were kept
behind the "red Velvet rope." I should make it a New Year's Resolution to fly SW then give a report. It's just the Horror stories
of some make me concerned.

There is no perfect boarding procedure and I
have in several posts made suggestions how to ease this. It seems some people can't wait (Its a New Yorker attitude... I too hate waiting in lines... but I will wait patiently
if I have to.)

The fortunate thing about having elite membership on airlines is that I can board early get my ONE carry-On in the overhead or in the seat in front of me and sit down before the cattle stampede. CATMAN

Catman, What OMNI? I was just letting your fellow Jerzee person, NJDavid, about our experiences, which is very legal.

Now, as we pursue another topic on this "Thanksgiving Load Factor" thread about WN,
I will again put in my opinion. Being a Texas resident, I once flew WN almost exclusively. Presently, I do not knowingly go to a WN terminal, thatS how far away I want to stay from WN and their CATTLECAR. One must arrive at the gate 1-1 1/2 hours to get an 1-30 boarding pass, from then on it's 61-90, back of the plane, 91 and higher, middle seats and no place to put a carry-on.
I'm sorry, dansil, but I simply do not have the time to arrive at the gate that far ahead of time to secure a reasonably good chance of not being trampled. Now, I know there are people out there that "swear-by" WN and will not fly anything else, in fact one of my best friends is one of those people. However, I prefer to "swear-at" WN for their "stoneage method" of treating their
paying passengers.

Jaws43: Agree with you. I've seen one airport where WN boarded in an orderly fashion, the rest (in my personal experience) were not real fun. You didn't mention that before the first 30 passengers board, there are going to be anywhere from 15-30 passengers who pre-board and WN makes no effort to control their numbers.

Well, Thanksgiving travel worked out well for me. I volunteered to get bumped on my way out of Columbus, OH and received a $300 travel voucher and confirmed travel only 2 hours later. I then attempted to get bumped on the next flight, and although that was not successful, I did end up flying first class which is always a good thing! Basically, I ended up back in San Diego only 90 mins after the original flight was scheduled. (Us non-elite have to devise other ways to get the deals!) Way to go United!

Wed. evening TPA-STL on TW--coach 80% full, first 33% full, I had upgraded. Extremely pleasant flight.
Fri AM STL-ORD on UA--able to stand by for the earlier flight (had booked later flight) and upgrade. First class 7/8 full (mostly employees--heard some talking about having to dead-head a lot this holiday), coach 2/3 full.

Congratulations RiceChek and Jamiel for getting your upgrades. If we have to travel on the holidays then we should get something special. (I have no idea what the UA worker
meant by Dead-head... maybe they're scheduled to work one of the SHuttle flights or plan to watch a tape of the late and great Jerry
Garcia and that DEAD!)

Jaws43... I'm very sorry I labeled you with an OMNI. For the record folks: Travel talk is
NOT OMNI... whether it's talking about flight
experiences like RiceChek and Jamiel did here
or my good buddy Jaws giving tips about Carmel.

For that Jaws when Matt Wald's done with his
CO-Cat-COp reign, You'll get your three day
reign! ENJOY but watch out for Roberto!
CATMAN

Kan I bi a Kat-Koop to, pliz. Mista Catman-Sir, yu are mi heiro...

i wants to be policio gato

mebbe we kan do it tugetha, arturo - hombre gato ees going on vaccination next munth. Then evrywon kan be executed primers!

i lacks yur idee, roberto. i wants to be gold medalyon passone executed primer milyun mileer. what diseese hombre gato have?

It amazes me to comprehend why a multi-billion dollar business can't devise and orderly boarding procedure?

First problem: The gate agents...everyone is often gathered around the counter and either people surround the table and all attempts fail at having an orderly line; OR one agent gets stuck and takes 10 minutes with a passenger, meanwhile, the line next to you is moving along fine (happened today in customs). I know space is more limited than in the ticketing area, but why can't they put up those velvet ropes and have everyone stand in one long snake line. Also, people who wait for standby's should have an area to their own...otherwise, again, they often standby(hence the name) the counter and a person approaching the gate agent doesn't know if these people are in line or just standing by.

Second problem: The rush for the plane. Maybe the airlines could pre-queue the passengers. For each seat on the plane, have little squares on the floor *s* yea! ..have a seating diagram of the plane, role it out, tell everyone to stand on their spot, then march them off in order ... last row window, last row middle, last row isle, and so on! (thinking...there have got to be flaws with this idea?)

Oh, got too Atlanta airport last Tuesday..I nightmare I tell you!! Long wait to get to park, then no parking in daily, then another long wait to leave for a park-and-fly, then long, long lines for checkin - lucky for me I was leaving the country...everyone was flying domestic.