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Comment by Bahamut | Hacker News Reader

I've heard of airline companies doing similar when interviewing flight attendants - United will fly you to Newark to interview, but often there will be people shadowing candidates to see how they behave during their travels and that feedback is taken into account when evaluating candidates.

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A strong part of me believes that United indexes on how much of an asshole the person can be. /s.

But, seriously, I feel like if you're using a potential employer's services, you should assume they're taking that into account when they're hiring you.

Seriously, compare the employees of United vs Southwest and there's a huge difference in attitude. Southwest employees seem happy, friendly, helpful, while United... Not.

I've flown United in every status, from nobody to the highest level of their frequent flyer plan. The problem isn't their people: it's that their airline has shitty policies.

I switched to Delta, and I'm much happier.

Interesting. Delta is the only airline I absolutely refuse to ever fly again.

It's a form of the birthday paradox. In a large enough room, there will be at least one person with a horror story about any airline.

All commercial airlines are pretty much awful. I've flown first class on one or two occasions and--while it's relatively more comfortable than flying in the main cabin--on an absolute scale it's still an uncomfortable, terrible experience. Flying sucks and airline management is the reason why.

… but I have far more horror stories per mile flown with Delta than with Southwest.

Granted, I've a lot less miles flown with Delta, but that's because every ride has been bad… (also, I ended up flying less miles with Delta on one of the horror shows because it seemed like they weren't actually interested in fulfilling their end of the bargain, and switched to a different airline: Southwest!)

Pretty uniformly the same experience for me with Southwest (pre-pandemic). I'd sometimes prefer to fly Southwest over other airlines even for longer flights. Consistently decent people; surprisingly so, since you'd assume cheaper flights would bring more difficult customers. But maybe I never flew the cheaper routes.

If I had very young children, or needed special accommodations, I might have a different opinion. The SWA preboarding process doesn't seem very generous.

No Southwest is boarding is great for kids. We all board at the same time (it is after one group) So you end up all sitting together, with other parents. and anyone that sits with you did it by choice, totally lowers the anxiety of bothering other passengers that do not have kids.

funny because i’ve heard of a very similar anecdote to this one but at southwest airlines.

And I'm sitting here wondering how people have bad interactions with flight attendants? Literally 90% of the words I say to them are:

Hello, how are you. Thank you. Yes, water please. Have a good day.

I think I asked once for a pillow (usually on Redeyes they hand them out)

I've never had a fight attendant decline my request, or complain about it...

Most common thing I say is "Enough with the damn credit card ads." Abusing safety equipment to abuse a captive audience should be a crime.

I haven't flown since 2018. I don't get the context.

Are the cc ads part of the safety video, or on the life preservers?

People sometimes have nonstandard needs, or get sick, or need to deal with another passenger's overly aggressive behavior. It's more about how the flight attendants react to those situations than to standard service.

I've started using a wheelchair recently so that's fresh on my mind. I haven't flown with it yet, but I'm nervous at the prospect of my delicate $10K power chair being smashed to bits in the cargo hold, or lost, or the flight attendants losing patience with me getting to my seat.

Are you not able to use it on the plane itself? It's been a long time since I've flown anywhere, but I seem to recall there being quite good accommodations for such things.

sadly no. ostensibly for safety reasons actually, I think, but likely more because airlines would have to sacrifice seats for wheelchair space. instead, you either have to limp (if you're able) or transfer to a transport chair so they can wheel you to your seat. it's a hassle.

it'd be a tight squeeze through the aisle if it were possible, but I could make it work in my chair.

Wheelchairs are much bigger than airplane aisles.

Not a horror story but once while sitting right at the back of a rather small local airline flight I found a pair of grimy white plastic jerry cans that had come loose from under my seat and were sliding around. I flagged a flight attendant down and was told they would ask the pilots. Later they told me they usually contained coffee! I was suprised that as the flight attendant they didn't know that but given the plane was so small maybe they were new to the job.

I once had a "There is water dripping on me; can you move me to a different seat and also tell me whether I should be concerned about that?". The flight attendant wasn't too thrilled about that one, probably because it created extra work for whoever had to figure out that it was just condensation. That's the only negative interaction I've ever had with a flight crew.

I had a flight attendant admonish me for being out of my seat when the fasten seatbelt light was on. But honestly, she was right: it was way too turbulent and my butt ought to have been in a seat. Problem was that nature was calling and the turbulence seemed interminable, and wasn't helping with the nature's call part.

(I ended up taking a seat in the rear for a bit & riding it out until a slightly smoother portion. Still had to bend the rules a bit. I owe you for your patience, flight attendant…)

Although, on one flight, there was a child behind us, real young (not really yet old enough to "know better"), listening to a tablet that was playing the ABCs song. But the tablet had to be stowed for take-off (apparently). She forced the parent to take the tablet from child. Child threw a tantrum. I'm eye'ing the attendant like "you caused this. ABCs > bawling kid, and takeoff with the tablet would have been fine"

Stowing large electronic items (bigger than a cell phone) is a safety requirement, and it’s likely that flight attendants have much less leeway in safety requirements than other aspects of the job.

(Please note that I’m not arguing that’s it’s a reasonable requirement, just that FAs likely don’t have the authority to ignore violations.)

If the plane crash lands during takeoff, all that stuff might catch fire/get in the way of a quick exit for the passengers crawling out

It's impressive if they have the resources and sophistication to really execute on this.

It's really nothing - just a different fare code. Gate agents and cabin crew can already tell when someone is a non-rev (e.g. an employee using flight benefits), so looping them in on the backend is just a quick schedule lookup and a couple more people on the feedback system. (N.B.: I'm not saying this actually happens, because I don't know; just that it would be very little trouble using systems that are already in place. I, for one, didn't change out of my suit until after I'd gotten back home when I did an airline interview.)

They could just note to flight attendants that there are passengers interviewing w/ the airline and have them raise any red flags pretty easily.

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