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Comment by LarryMullins | Hacker News Reader

> Southwest is a "discount" airline.

They're also the "friendly airline", they easily have the most personable and friendly staff. I don't know what they do different, but Southwest employees treat me human and all the rest generally treat me like human trash. It's got to be a company culture thing, maybe connected to Southwest not having a first-class section.

Usually I fly with Southwest whenever possible without thinking twice about it, but this outage and the outage last year are forcing me to reconsider. Better to deal with rude people than to have my flight delayed..

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Yep, the other airlines are in the business of selling "class" and "status," and it's part of their product differentiation strategy to treat you according to how much you pay.

>I don't know what they do different, but Southwest employees treat me human and all the rest generally treat me like human trash. It's got to be a company culture thing

Definitely. Normal American customer service is to treat you like human trash, so obviously Southwest has decided to do this differently and so probably does things like only hiring friendly people, training them to be friendly and positive even in difficult situations, and checking on them somehow to make sure they're doing this and not just faking it for the interview and training. Other airlines obviously don't, but it's not just airlines, it's everywhere in American customer-facing business these days. Rudeness is just a normal part of America culture now.

> Rudeness is just a normal part of America culture now.

I have a backpack that has a phone holder on the shoulder strap. When you click your phone in it, the camera is visible. I've had many a situation where someone was about to go full New York on me, but noticed the camera staring at them and toned it down. I've never once been recording.

Very interesting. I should look for a backpack like this, so I can be prepared the next time I travel to America.

What kind of backpack do you have?

It's an Orben with a cheap iphone belt holder clipped into the cargo loop on the strap. The belt holder came with the clear protective case I bought at Wal-Mart. I hung the belt hodlder on the strap and it's been great for recording short hikes and downtown excursions. But also, seems to have the effect of making people more polite at customer service counters.

  training them to be friendly and positive even in difficult situations

Without having any insight into how Southwest runs things I'd venture to guess that their gate agents and cabin crew have a lot more discretion than their peers at, for example, United. That kind of leeway makes the job much, much easier. United essentially handcuffed their staff leaving few options for dealing with an overbooked flight but to escalate to police involvement.

That's what happened with Dr. Dao in any case. Not long after that shit show, I booked a transcon on American. Turns out it was overbooked, and they were desperate to get people off the plane. The gate agents basically asked how much money it would take to get people to volunteer to take another flight. They got their volunteers, everyone went home happy because American empowered their staff to resolve problems.

A lot of people lay responsibility for Southwest's reputation for customer service at Herb's feet. Personally I found their front line staff to be casual to the point that it bordered on unprofessional (which is something coming from someone allergic to formality), but I'd absolutely believe that much of their positive reputation came from the top. Southwest pilots though, yikes.

With the exception of United I'd say most airlines I've dealt with have been pleasant whether or not I'm flying up front or have status. Yes, even RyanAir. We're in something of a golden age since (with the notable exception of Southwest) American airlines have mostly put their mergers behind them and have mostly shed themselves of CEOs who view employees as adversaries. Take a look at the bad old days of the late 80s through mid 2000s. Smisek. Lorenzo. Parker. Bastards and crooks, all of them. It's difficult to stress just how toxic airline leadership was and how that trickled down for a long time.

Southwest also has pretty good size seats, afaik, relative to other airlines' economy seat size. Plus the whole "you're all the same so we treat you all the same" thing is nice. I do wish there was an international equivalent.

Delta has been more than fine with me. Granted, I'm a Diamond class member now, but even on the way up they were reasonable and provided mostly good service.

United is awful. American isn't much better.

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