Family Asked To Leave Southwest Flight After Tweet
Jul 24, 2014, 7:27 am
#152
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 3,975
The ABC story says "The gate agent allegedly asked Watson and his two children to step aside and wait until the rest of the A-list members board."
Let's say that the Operations Agent actually said or meant at the end of the A group, in which case she was already bending the rules for family boarding, with no children under 5.
Let's say that the Operations Agent actually said or meant at the end of the A group, in which case she was already bending the rules for family boarding, with no children under 5.
Jul 24, 2014, 7:38 am
#153
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Charlotte
Programs: Hilton Diamond, Marriott Platinum Elite, AA Platinum Pro, Hertz Presidents
Posts: 1,214
Dumbest comment I read today.
He is free to say what he wants, but there is a proper way to file a complaint and get it handled. People think they can say whatever and get away with it, sorry it doesn't work that way. You are free to say what you will, but that doesn't mean you get away without any repercussions.
If it were me I would have denied boarding, refunded the full cost of the tickets, and told them to find another airline. Douche bag mentality needs to be put into check and some just think because they have a certain status that they get to have their way all the time. It doesn't work like that. If he would have followed the rules like everyone else, instead of thinking himself more important than everyone else on the aircraft, this would have been a non-issue.
I also echo the comments on how the TV station was called on such a non-story. This guy is chasing attention.
He is free to say what he wants, but there is a proper way to file a complaint and get it handled. People think they can say whatever and get away with it, sorry it doesn't work that way. You are free to say what you will, but that doesn't mean you get away without any repercussions.
If it were me I would have denied boarding, refunded the full cost of the tickets, and told them to find another airline. Douche bag mentality needs to be put into check and some just think because they have a certain status that they get to have their way all the time. It doesn't work like that. If he would have followed the rules like everyone else, instead of thinking himself more important than everyone else on the aircraft, this would have been a non-issue.
I also echo the comments on how the TV station was called on such a non-story. This guy is chasing attention.
If you have half a brain, you know Kim S did NOT feel threatened at all. She was power-tripping.
With all that said, I applaud her for following the rules, and not allowing this guy to break the rules. She just shouldn't have power-tripped his benign comments.
PS Pretty rude to call others comments dumb. Why dumb? Because it's a different opinion than yours. That's dumb!
Jul 24, 2014, 7:47 am
#154
Original Poster
Join Date: May 2003
Location: VA
Programs: Marriott: LTP
Posts: 387
Jul 24, 2014, 7:51 am
#155
Join Date: May 2011
Programs: US Airways Gold, Marriott Platinum, SW A List
Posts: 1,575
Family Asked To Leave Southwest Flight After Tweet
It's not part of their marketing plan because it is not appealing. Doesn't mean it is false though. If it is that important to be guaranteed a seat together than those are two options.
Jul 24, 2014, 7:57 am
#156
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: San Diego, Ca
Programs: AA 2MM LT PLT; AS MVP Gold75k; HHonors Diamond; IHG PLT
Posts: 3,502
More evidence that WN boarding procedures require an overhaul - either go back to the old first come, first serve (like plastic boarding cards), or something similar to the rest of the industry. WN created this monster when the system was monetized, time to fix it.
First step would be to assign sequential boarding positions for immediate family (same last name), require EBCI for ALL people traveling together - no just one. This would resolve a VAST majority of the current issues.
First step would be to assign sequential boarding positions for immediate family (same last name), require EBCI for ALL people traveling together - no just one. This would resolve a VAST majority of the current issues.
Jul 24, 2014, 8:04 am
#157
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: San Diego, Ca
Programs: AA 2MM LT PLT; AS MVP Gold75k; HHonors Diamond; IHG PLT
Posts: 3,502
Many of us ONLY fly WN when we have NO OTHER OPTION; that attitude worked when WN was a low fare carrier, flying to secondary airports. When WN made aggressive moves to force out competition, such incidences are inevitable.
Jul 24, 2014, 8:25 am
#158
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 147
The beautiful thing about social media is that this is EXACTLY the type of situation where it empowers the customer.
Let's say this happened 10 or 15 years ago. The guy gets into an argument with the GA / Ops Agent, and feels she was rude to him. Maybe his issue isn't so much with the answer but the way she gave it / treated him. What are his options?
- Call customer service? Sure, and sit on hold for who knows how long, possibly reaching a call center agent who is not empowered to do anything.
- Ask for a supervisor at the gate? Sure, and watch his plane pull away in the meantime.
- Tell his friends and family? This is what most people did. You'd form a small tribe of people refusing to fly SWA, but every company would have a similar pocket, and for the most part, they would cancel each other out.
- Write a letter? Ok, maybe this might get you somewhere, but the customer has little to no leverage, and resolution might not come for weeks if at all.
- Contact a news station? No one is going to want to get involved in a simple verbal dispute between a customer service agent and a customer without some kind of "twist" making it newsworthy.
It is precisely because of the existence of social media, and the fact that he smartly tweeted his experience, that this is a story.
I'm sure a lot of you are thinking "Wait a second, how smart could that be if it got him pulled of the flight?"... I'd argue that while it created a lot of stress for this guy and his family, it's good for airline customers in general:
- It is precisely because of the tweet "angle", and the deletion of it, that this is a national story.
- It provides feedback on his experience to anyone and everyone that cares to look at SWA's twitter feed. That includes any employee, and any customer. Perhaps if he had escalated to a direct supervisor, they would have covered for the employee instinctively. An executive in another part of the company might be more interested in hearing the customer's side of what happened.
- It was likely cathartic to the customer. One issue with company-created feedback loops is they are opaque to the customer. You give them your feedback, it disappears into the black box, and at best you might get some points or a voucher. In this case, the customer knows that his voice is at least being heard.
- Most importantly, it creates a piece of direct, written feedback for the specific employee involved. Maybe she had past incidents and had been previously warned, which is why she was so insistent he delete the tweet? If she was an outstanding employee, one piece of negative feedback is not going to impact anything.
Like anything else in life, there are good customer service agents, and there are not so good ones. I'm actually amazed at some of the situations I've seen good airline employees defuse. All of us have bosses, and most of us get some kind of subjective performance review by them at one point or another. The customer is the ultimate boss. Anytime they're willing to give feedback, it should be valued.
Let's say this happened 10 or 15 years ago. The guy gets into an argument with the GA / Ops Agent, and feels she was rude to him. Maybe his issue isn't so much with the answer but the way she gave it / treated him. What are his options?
- Call customer service? Sure, and sit on hold for who knows how long, possibly reaching a call center agent who is not empowered to do anything.
- Ask for a supervisor at the gate? Sure, and watch his plane pull away in the meantime.
- Tell his friends and family? This is what most people did. You'd form a small tribe of people refusing to fly SWA, but every company would have a similar pocket, and for the most part, they would cancel each other out.
- Write a letter? Ok, maybe this might get you somewhere, but the customer has little to no leverage, and resolution might not come for weeks if at all.
- Contact a news station? No one is going to want to get involved in a simple verbal dispute between a customer service agent and a customer without some kind of "twist" making it newsworthy.
It is precisely because of the existence of social media, and the fact that he smartly tweeted his experience, that this is a story.
I'm sure a lot of you are thinking "Wait a second, how smart could that be if it got him pulled of the flight?"... I'd argue that while it created a lot of stress for this guy and his family, it's good for airline customers in general:
- It is precisely because of the tweet "angle", and the deletion of it, that this is a national story.
- It provides feedback on his experience to anyone and everyone that cares to look at SWA's twitter feed. That includes any employee, and any customer. Perhaps if he had escalated to a direct supervisor, they would have covered for the employee instinctively. An executive in another part of the company might be more interested in hearing the customer's side of what happened.
- It was likely cathartic to the customer. One issue with company-created feedback loops is they are opaque to the customer. You give them your feedback, it disappears into the black box, and at best you might get some points or a voucher. In this case, the customer knows that his voice is at least being heard.
- Most importantly, it creates a piece of direct, written feedback for the specific employee involved. Maybe she had past incidents and had been previously warned, which is why she was so insistent he delete the tweet? If she was an outstanding employee, one piece of negative feedback is not going to impact anything.
Like anything else in life, there are good customer service agents, and there are not so good ones. I'm actually amazed at some of the situations I've seen good airline employees defuse. All of us have bosses, and most of us get some kind of subjective performance review by them at one point or another. The customer is the ultimate boss. Anytime they're willing to give feedback, it should be valued.
Jul 24, 2014, 8:35 am
#159
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Chicagoland, IL, USA
Programs: WN CP, Hilton Diamond
Posts: 14,192
I would not be surprised if someone at WN had bent rules for him before. That's the problem with bending rules; people start to think of that as an entitlement or normal deal. We have all heard "They let me do this last time" repeatedly.
From the ABC story online:
"A Southwest representative called Watson after the incident, and informed him that A-list members' priority treatment doesn't apply to family members.
"I looked on their website and I didn't find any explicit rule," Watson said."
Must not have searched too hard. The Google search string
family boarding site:southwest.com
brings up the list of boarding rules as link 1. #7 is the "explicit rule" he is looking for:
"An adult traveling with a child four years old or younger may board during Family Boarding, which occurs after the "A" group has boarded and before the "B" group begins boarding. However, those Customers holding an "A" boarding pass should still board with the "A" boarding group."
Admittedly, there is some of the normal WN T&C ambiguity there. He is being told to board as an A and I think we can agree that it makes no sense to leave little kids alone in the gate area. But if the GA or OA tells you to board after A, that's what you do.
And his kids are both older than 4 anyway. Case closed.
Searching the A-List benefits shows no exception to the above.
From the ABC story online:
"A Southwest representative called Watson after the incident, and informed him that A-list members' priority treatment doesn't apply to family members.
"I looked on their website and I didn't find any explicit rule," Watson said."
Must not have searched too hard. The Google search string
family boarding site:southwest.com
brings up the list of boarding rules as link 1. #7 is the "explicit rule" he is looking for:
"An adult traveling with a child four years old or younger may board during Family Boarding, which occurs after the "A" group has boarded and before the "B" group begins boarding. However, those Customers holding an "A" boarding pass should still board with the "A" boarding group."
Admittedly, there is some of the normal WN T&C ambiguity there. He is being told to board as an A and I think we can agree that it makes no sense to leave little kids alone in the gate area. But if the GA or OA tells you to board after A, that's what you do.
And his kids are both older than 4 anyway. Case closed.
Searching the A-List benefits shows no exception to the above.
Last edited by toomanybooks; Jul 24, 2014 at 8:48 am
Jul 24, 2014, 8:55 am
#162
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 6,286
I would not be surprised if someone at WN had bent rules for him before. That's the problem with bending rules; people start to think of that as an entitlement or normal deal.
From the ABC story online:
"A Southwest representative called Watson after the incident, and informed him that A-list members' priority treatment doesn't apply to family members.
"I looked on their website and I didn't find any explicit rule," Watson said."
Must not have searched too hard. The Google search string
family boarding site:southwest.com
brings up the list of rules as link 1. #7 is the "explicit rule" he is looking for:
"An adult traveling with a child four years old or younger may board during Family Boarding, which occurs after the "A" group has boarded and before the "B" group begins boarding. However, those Customers holding an "A" boarding pass should still board with the "A" boarding group."
Admittedly, there is some of the normal WN T&C ambiguity there, where with that last sentence you could debate whether "those Customers" includes minor children, since children presumably cannot agree to T&Cs themselves. But if the GA or OA tells you to board after A, that's what you do.
And his kids are both older than 4 anyway. Case closed.
Searching the A-List benefits shows no exception to the above.
From the ABC story online:
"A Southwest representative called Watson after the incident, and informed him that A-list members' priority treatment doesn't apply to family members.
"I looked on their website and I didn't find any explicit rule," Watson said."
Must not have searched too hard. The Google search string
family boarding site:southwest.com
brings up the list of rules as link 1. #7 is the "explicit rule" he is looking for:
"An adult traveling with a child four years old or younger may board during Family Boarding, which occurs after the "A" group has boarded and before the "B" group begins boarding. However, those Customers holding an "A" boarding pass should still board with the "A" boarding group."
Admittedly, there is some of the normal WN T&C ambiguity there, where with that last sentence you could debate whether "those Customers" includes minor children, since children presumably cannot agree to T&Cs themselves. But if the GA or OA tells you to board after A, that's what you do.
And his kids are both older than 4 anyway. Case closed.
Searching the A-List benefits shows no exception to the above.
The section that does apply is this one:
Can groups assigned to different boarding positions board together?
Yes. However, in order to maintain the integrity of the boarding process, we ask that earlier boarding positions board with the later positions. For example, if a passenger is assigned position A16 and wants to board with a passenger assigned position A45, the passenger holding the A16 boarding pass should board with the A45 passenger.
Yes. However, in order to maintain the integrity of the boarding process, we ask that earlier boarding positions board with the later positions. For example, if a passenger is assigned position A16 and wants to board with a passenger assigned position A45, the passenger holding the A16 boarding pass should board with the A45 passenger.
The point is that an employee made a passenger delete a tweet as a requirement for travel.
Which is 100%, unequivocally wrong.
Jul 24, 2014, 8:56 am
#163
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 6,286
Jul 24, 2014, 9:01 am
#164
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Chicagoland, IL, USA
Programs: WN CP, Hilton Diamond
Posts: 14,192
Might be different if the cut-off were 13 instead of 4.
The fact that we here know different and that WN has b!tched things up is kind of beside the point.
4 is too young. But WN wants to sell EBCI.
Jul 24, 2014, 9:03 am
#165
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 5,813
This seems like one of the consequences of inconsistent enforcement of the boarding rules.
Not to excuse the apparently bad behavior on either side.
I also think the Southwest Family Boarding Policy is somewhat defective
This rule is also inconsistently applied, many times much older children are allowed to board during family boarding.
Seems to me the age limit should be the same as for a UM, after all if a child can't travel unaccompanied why would you split the parent from the child?
Not to excuse the apparently bad behavior on either side.
I also think the Southwest Family Boarding Policy is somewhat defective
An adult traveling with a child four years old or younger may board during Family Boarding, which occurs after the "A" group has boarded and before the "B" group begins boarding. However, those Customers holding an "A" boarding pass should still board with the "A" boarding group.
Seems to me the age limit should be the same as for a UM, after all if a child can't travel unaccompanied why would you split the parent from the child?