The Newest Permanent Blacklist Member Award Goes To…Southwest Airlines! W00t!
I have many companies on my permanent blacklist, but I don’t put them there on a whim. They have to fuck me over well outside of the normal parameters for their industry or peers within their industry. I traveled on business from 2004 to 2006 and put two on my blacklist: Northwest Airlines and United Airlines.
With Northwest Airlines, there was a flight so mismanaged and the flight attendants so rude that they earned the first spot for an airline on my list. And we, the paying customers, weren’t being rude to the flight attendants at all, we just wanted to get on a plane and go the fuck home at some point. Not surprisingly (because I knew they would be gone at some point soon based on my experience), they got bought out by Delta in 2008.
With United Airlines, they treated a disabled person like complete and total shit on one of my flights and this pissed me off so bad that they became the second airline member. That full story is recounted here after United Airlines beat a paying customer bloody who was minding his own business and dragged him off the plane in 2017. Not surprising given the way they treated the disabled person that I met.
I’ve occasionally flown for both business and leisure both before those years and after. With Southwest Airlines, I’ve never really liked them. I’ve flown them a lot, as the closest airport to me (BWI) is one of their hubs and they have plenty of direct flights. However, both the airport and clientele on these flights is ghetto since this is Baltimore, but that’s not Southwest’s fault.
Probably the worst thing that had happened to me up until this past weekend was trying to fly out to Disney with my family in April, 2016 before I potentially died from a brain tumor (seriously). When our airplane arrived and pulled up to the gate, they announced that there was a maintenance issue and that the flight would have to be cancelled. We lost the first day at Disney as a result.
Again, this wasn’t necessarily Southwest’s fault. Shit happens. This past weekend was different. After spending the past two+ years busting my ass working while having an inoperable brain tumor that causes various neurological issues while others sat around on social media arguing about pronouns and insisting the reason they are sick is not the result of taking the unsafe ineffective experimental drug they call a vaccine, I went on what I felt was a much-deserved vacation to the Florida Keys.
On the way down we sat on the tarmac for thirty minutes without any update from the pilot, which was lame. When he finally spoke up after getting in the air, he sounded awfully tired or at least very uninterested. On the way back is when the shit really hit the fan. Articles like this one had come out just prior to our travel day:
https://simpleflying.com/southwest-airlines-pilot-union-fatigue-warning/
Then our evening flight got delayed a couple of hours. Then while driving back to Miami near Homestead, I received a text message that my now-rescheduled flight that evening was cancelled. I’m really glad they notified me and that I saw it, because if not, I would have turned back in my rental car and might not have been able to get another one. About 15 minutes later, I got another text message saying I had been put on flight 3038 the following morning departing at 7:10am. I immediately diverted and got a hotel room.
In the 3:00am hour, I happened to be up and saw a text message saying my flight now departed at 9:30am. We got to the airport between 7:30 and 8:00am and got to the gate before 9:00am and they said there was going to be a delay, but they weren’t sure how long. The reason for the delay was that there was “crew fatigue” and they needed to wait for the crew to show up and evaluate the plane.
The crew showed up about 9:30am and reported that the lights had been left on in the cabin, thus the plane would need to be delayed by 3 hours to charge the battery. They then said that the pilot requested another plane so that we could take off so we switched gates. They said the plane was at the gate.
It wasn’t. After the plane arrived sometime later, the crew went to open the door and “the emergency slide nearly popped.” This was because “the slide was unlocked.” This then resulted delay after delay after delay (every half hour) as they did a full safety check. We finally departed around 12:45pm.
I can think of three potential reasons for multiple failures like this:
1. They were lying to simply cover for their incompetence.
2. Fatigue induced these multiple errors to occur.
3. It was sabotage by the crew because they’re pissed at Southwest’s management.
I think the third reason (sabotage) is within the realm of possibility and this is what concerns me the most. Furthermore, this fiasco was worse than any other time I’ve flown by about a factor or 10. The shit that got Northwest Airlines on my permanent blacklist greatly pales in comparison to this shit. For a couple of hours that morning, my wife and I were seriously considering getting a one-way car rental and driving our family home. It was that bad.
One of the stupidest parts of the ordeal was having to sit there on the dirty floor of the airport for about six hours in a stupid fucking mask or risk getting arrested then continuing to have to wear the mask on the plane. This mandate was lifted this past Monday after a federal judge struck it down, but unsurprisingly, the Biden administration has said they will appeal if the CDC thinks masks should still be worn on planes.
I saw the video where Amazing Polly calls people who were flying losers for not sticking up and saying no to masks. That includes me on this past trip for the first time, and she’s right. Part of this trip was a test to see if our family wanted to resume taking flights to vacation destinations after refusing to fly for over the two+ years of the plandemic. That answer is an obvious no and with Southwest now on my permanent blacklist, that represents a problem flying at all, as the airport closest to me, BWI, is a Southwest hub. I’ll probably need to drive to other airports, like Philly, to get decent flights.
So, it’s possible I may never fly again. There’s also that small little issue that we’re still only in the beginning stage of a democide that will radically change western nations over the course of the next decade. Given this, another thing that was on the back of my mind on this trip was the persistent rumors that pilots were having health problems in the air, both commercial and armed forces. Well, when I got home, news broke that it happened to Robert (Bob) Snow on American Airlines flight 1067 on April 9, the day I left for vacation. He went into cardiac arrest a few minutes after pulling into the gate after landing.
I’m slated to travel by airline for my job in July and I just told them I don’t feel safe flying because I don’t feel safe doing so with the pilots having been vaccinated. I’m not sure how well that’s gone over, but they’re already on my shit list for mandating its employees get the vaccine, which I’ve continued to refuse to do. My job can already technically be terminated at any time for this, per written company policy that I refused to sign.
P.S. You can call me a loser for going to Disney in 2016 too. My reason is that I wanted to give my kids a memorable trip before I potentially died and they were at the age where they wanted to go. Plus, Disney wasn’t quite as bad then as it is now. Neither kid wants to go to Disney again at this point.
P.P.S. I had to have emergency surgery two weeks after that 2016 vacation to save my life from the tumor.
