Another great story
 

DAL - LAX, I'm hitching a ride sitting a few rows from the front.

We're ready to close the door and push on time, when the gate agent runs onboard the plane and finds a passenger. A hushed conversation, and it turns out her ID card was left at the TSA checkpoint. We have only 5 min left to push, gate agent tells the lady that he doesn't know if TSA will keep it a week until her return, and if she leaves to go get it she will probably miss this flight.

The lady gets up and gets all her stuff, and starts to exit the plane. The gate agent on the way out pokes his head into the cockpit, and has a quick discussion with the crew. Long story short, decreased headwinds mean we can push 15 min late and still arrive early. CA makes the decision to delay the push, and will let dispatch know it's for a good cause.

The lady is reassured that we'll still be at the gate when she gets back, the gate agent watches over her bags on the jetway as she runs off to get her ID, and the CA tells everyone that we're gonna push late so the lady can get her ID but we'll still be early to LAX.

The lady returns 10ish minutes later slightly out of breath but looking happy. The ENTIRE plane breaks out into applause for her and the crew that helped her get her ID and still make the flight.

We still blocked into LAX a few min early. Great job by the entire SWA team making that lady's week and every pax on the plane knows the crew and gate agent went out of their way to make it happen.

Nice.

You have an entire plane of loyal customers for life!

Love stories like this one.

You're doing it wrong. We'd push 15 minutes early leaving 20 paying pax and 3 jumpseaters behind so that our contract gate agents will get their bonus and we can brag about our A14 times on the High Five channel. AH-mah-REE-yoh baby!

Sadly enough, I was right seat on a trip where this happened :( Plane pulled up in the gate next to us right as the gate agent showed up, with about 30 no-shows. CA asked about them, was told they were transfers from the plane that just pulled in. CA asked gate agent to open up boarding again, gate agent and entire supervisor chain through ops refused. We still had a cargo door open so it wouldn't have even added more than 5 minutes to push time, so CA called the company.

Company said push, leaving the transfers behind.

Cargo door closed sometime later, and we still pushed 5-10 min late, with about 30 sad faces in the terminal watching us until we pushed.

But we were something like second in the industry for on-time performance that month, so high fives for the company execs and 2 million buck payraise for our next CEO. Pretty clear where the priorities are :(

Quite the contrast from SWA.

Along the same lines, had a Capt who likely saved our daughters life.

We were on a carryover flight from Pdx to phx, with a stopover in abq. Daughter started to spike a fever, and the last time that happened she went into a massive fever seizure for an hour. Wife went up to ask FA about any kids meds, worth asking since adult can be available. But no luck. Capt happened to be boarding, overheard, clarified with the FA and promptly got off the plane. We had no clue until right as the door closed the FA comes down the aisle with kids ibuprofen for our daughter. He had ran and got her meds. The next time she had a fever she ended up with 30plus seizures and needing intense emergency care for breathing. If he hadn't helped it very likely would've been life threatening for her.
The slight delay meant he had to run to the next flight so we never got to thank him. Wife wrote in but not the same. Swa fliers for life because of that act. Many other good trips but that is what makes the difference for us.

Wait... you were going to fly the second leg to PHX??? You didn't get off the plane in ABQ and go to the ER?

Are you kidding me? Don’t ever get on a plane that puts your family’s health at risk. I ended up diverting over the middle of the country on a transcon to save a 3 week old’s life that the parents knew was sick when they got on.

She didn't have a fever until on the plane. At that point it wasn't confirmed she would have seizures. Just that it could happen so we were worried and thought to check with the crew. We only found out the severity the next time it happened. They thought the first was a one off occurrence, so while we could have gotten off in abq rushing to the ER with a 101 fever was not what we had been told to do. Fever seizures normally are not an issue and often get missed. They have to go 5 minutes before dr will even look into causes.

That works for a Texas crowd, try JFKers on their way to LAX. :eek: