Plane & Simple on Southwest

Flight 672, 1112 2/3-2/5

PHX – DAL

For those of you wondering, my laptop hasn’t exploded yet. Woohoo!

On my flight to Dallas, I noticed that another intern was sitting in the gate area. He saw me and we ended up chatting. I got on the plane before him and saved a seat. We ended up chatting the entire flight about geeky aviation stuff. I learned quite a bit since he has his commercial pilot’s license! Also funny to note, was a flight attendant recognized me from my flight the week before.

When our flight landed, some lady in the back of the plane yelled, “Are we there yet!? I need a cigarette!” I didn’t think much of it until it was time to get off the plane. Three officers were waiting in the front by the galley, while four ops agents stood in the jet bridge. Holy moly, they must’ve been there for her. I didn’t stick around to see what ended up happening… all I know is that she probably didn’t get that cigarette.

DAL – PHX

When I got on the plane, I put my stuff down and headed towards the back to get a can of water… on the way back, someone had left their delicious unopened snack pack on the seat, so I snagged it. Then! When I got back there, the flight attendant handed me a bottle of water that she had just grabbed that hadn’t been opened. Double score!

The first leg of the flight, the pilots didn’t give us an update of the score of the game. So when we landed in El Paso, I asked the flight attendant if she could ask the pilots if we could get an update.

After everyone had boarded, she came over the overhead intercom and said, “We know that one third of you don’t care about the Superbowl. We know that one third of you want to know the score. And we know that one third of you are taping it and don’t want to know the score. SO! If you do not want to know the score, please ring your flight attendant call button and we will not announce game updates.”

I popped my head up and glared around at everyone – my thought process was, if you didn’t want to hear the game updates, cover your ears! Luckily, no one rang the button – so the pilots updated us with the score about every 20 or so minutes.

I ended up catching about 5 minutes of the game before the shuttle showed up to take me to my car – and then when I was about to get off the shuttle, I overheard on the radio, “Giants win!” Everyone on the shuttle began clapping - Yay for the underdogs!

Flight 672, 1112 1/27-29

I’m all embarrassed now that I’m a week behind posting my flights. I’m getting caught up today though!

DAL – PHX

My flight tonight was my first flight with intern benefits! Horray! I received my OK to go earlier this week (we had to have our managers approval) so I began looking at flights right away.

Tonight I got to the airport early and used my employee badge to get through security. After I had gone through the nakkie scanner, the TSA lady stopped me and said, “RPD” – whatever that means… random person… something? She told me that I needed extra screening so I complied. I stepped into a make-shift room made out of metal poles and black curtains. The TSA lady asked me what stuff I had, I pointed to my personal bin with my flip flops, cell phone, belt, etc., the bin with my two laptops, as well as the backpack and suitcase that followed. She took a deep breath as she walked towards my stuff.

She stacked my laptop bin on top of the other bin. Keep in mind, my two laptops don’t necessarily fit in the bin together side by side, so the one laptop is propped up on the side of the bin and the other laptop has about an inch slid underneath it. Not the most genius thing I’ve ever done, but having to navigate four pieces through security is enough of a hassle and the last thing I want to do is have to deal with five. Nonetheless. She grabs my bins and backpack while another TSA agent gets my suitcase. As she’s walking towards this makeshift room, the tip of my laptop clips the pole and falls out – straight to the tile floor.

Now, I will say that the TSA lady did tell me to “open it up and make sure it was working” which I did – and it seemed to be working fine – but still. She then said, “Well this has never happened to me before!” Well I would hope not!

As I type this up on said laptop, I’m just waiting for it to give me some terrible error and then start smoking.

So I got my lovely pat-down in the “room”. It was awkward… Not only did I wait like 5 minutes for someone to show up to pat me down, but then they were trying to make small talk. I just wanted to get out of there and make sure my laptop was really okay.

So now the plane ride. I got the last row of seats to myself. As soon as we could turn on our electronics, I brought my laptop out and put the tray table down. I was typing up some stuff when the lady in front of me decided she wanted to put her seat back as fast as she could… nearly crushing my laptop screen. As I was trying to wriggle my laptop out of the seatback-claws-of-death, she looked back trying to figure out why her seat wasn’t going back any further (my laptop was preventing it) and then she pushed back on her seat, further squishing my laptop.

Today is not a good day for my laptop. I think I’ll leave it at home from now on.

As for the flight, the flight attendants were great. Before takeoff, they announced, “We’re going to go really really fast… and get really really high… but not that kind of high.” I laughed out loud – hadn’t heard that one before.

PHX – DAL

I’m not even going to give you a description of this flight… since I slept 99% of both flights (PHX – ELP – DAL). 

Flight 672, 1536, 1568

DAL - ELP 1/20

I was so excited to fly home and see my hubs this weekend - It had been 9 days since I left Phoenix and temporarily moved to Dallas. The flight in was great - although I did learn that I prefer a stop where I have to change planes so that I can get up and walk around. On this flight, there was no plane change and I began to felt claustrophobic/antsy towards the end of the flight. 

I sat next to a super nice guy who also works at HDQ. We chatted back and fourth about aviation and the company. 

ELP - PHX

There were so few people on this flight that we all got our own rows. The guy that was sitting next to me ended up moving to the row across from me and laid down on the seats like it was a bed. I gotta learn to do that… Especially since these flights home every weekend will be 4 hours! I was so happy to have landed in Phoenix that I started crying when I saw my guy’s car pulling up. I hope we never have to go that long again without seeing each other!

PHX - ABQ 1/22

After getting in to Phoenix at 11pm on Friday, I was awake at 5am Sunday morning to catch the first flight out. The guy that was on my flight out on Friday ended up being on my flights home this morning! Needless to say, at 5am, I felt like a zombie… and quite frankly, as soon as I got on the plane to ABQ, I passed out. I woke up when we began our bumpy descent.

ABQ - DAL

We had an hour layover in ABQ, which wasn’t all that bad because I was able to walk around a bit. When we got on the plane, I was pretty surprised to see that the only available aisle was the last row of the aircraft. I do remember it being super bumpy on takeoff and super bumpy on the landing. It’s a good thing I got out of Phoenix early today, because I’ve heard there have been some delays all throughout Texas.

Hope you guys had a great weekend! 

Flight 1272, 37 1/12

It’s official, I moved to Dallas! Well, less “move” and more “am living in” since most of my stuff is still in Phoenix. 

PHX - ABQ

It was difficult to leave Phoenix, since it is my home. I had no problem getting out to Albuquerque. I had to laugh - at the beginning of the flight, about half way through when the flight attendant was giving the safety announcement, the pilot started talking out of no where. It was pretty funny to see the confusion. The flight was smooth - I tried napping but I had a million things going on in my mind. Slightly bumpy landing when we arrived - which is exactly what I remember when I used to live there. 

ABQ - DAL

I met my mom and sister at the airport (they came in from Las Vegas). We all caught a flight to Dallas. I got a lower boarding pass letter/number so i got on the plane before them - but there wasn’t a full aisle available so I asked a gal to save two seats and I sat on the aisle seat behind her. When my mom and sister finally got on the plane, the lady realized that we were together and offered to switch me seats so the three of us could sit together… that was super nice of her! The flight went out completely full - 137 people - we got super lucky! The three of us chatted during the flight and landed smoothly in Dallas.

I start my internship with Southwest on Tuesday… Wish me luck! :)

Flight 251, 2391

PHX - LAS 1/10

I did a quick roundtrip flight yesterday. I had a couple doctor’s appointments so I was only in Vegas for a few hours. The flight was nice… although the lading sitting next to me… ugh… I’ll explain…. I was the first to sit down, she came and sat on the aisle seat… no big deal. Then she decided that the middle seat, middle seat back cover and the space under the middle seat was all her space to take. She put her bags under the middle seat, put her drink and book in the middle seat back cover and then put her purse and jacket on the middle seat. Like, seriously? The middle seat, if empty, should be equally shared space between the window and aisle seat passengers. 

Oh well. It was nice to fly! I hadn’t been on a plane in almost a month! 

LAS - PHX

Another good flight home. I was so exhausted from only getting a few hours of sleep, I ended up falling asleep on the plane - which if you know me, is very rare. I woke up right before we landed and was able to catch a great view of the city before the sun set. 

Happy New Year!

I have some very very VERY exciting news to publicly announce. 

As you all know, I’m a huge fan of Southwest Airlines. And I am beyond elated to announce that I was offered (and accepted!) an internship position with them this spring!

Happy New Year to you! And ME!