Southwest Airlines Community

First of all, let me apologize for the length of this entry, but to fully understand our praise, an explaination is in order: This is not about Carole, whom I am sure is fantastic like alot of SWA Flight Attendants and Crew we've dealt with in the last 5 days, but is about another outstanding SWA employee my husband and I had the pleasure to work with this past weekend in Philadelphia. It all started wrong and was admittedly our fault from the beginning. We had travelled to Phily to see The Eagles beat The Panthers on Monday Night Football and after a late game had an early morning flight out of Phily, we booked our hotel just late enough that being loyal Marriott patrons, we were forced to stay 30 miles outside of the city and although we thought we left early enough to make the one hour TSA window to timely board our flight, Phily rush hour had different plans for us. After turning our rental car in at the airport, we had 20 minutes to get the shuttle to the terminal and make our flight - cutting it way too close. Our rental car (insert plug for Enterprise) company got us there in 3 minutes and dropped us at the SWA terminal at 7:21 on Dec. 5 (our flight was 7:40 -yikes!!). We had some issues with check in being that we were evidently required to check in using the do it yourself monitor - and since this is meant to be in praise of an employee and not a contuation of a complaint we already made and has been addressed - I will stop there and skip ahead. After checking way too late in the first place, we thought we might get lucky and catch our flight - hoping there was not a line at the TSA security checkpoint and that we looked like we might be in a hurry and could somehow elicit the grace of the TSA gods. This was not meant to be. Being that we were in a hurry and could not be assured our bags would make it with us - had we made the flight - to OKC, I regressed to pre-9/11 flight mode and grabbed our toiletry bag out of our checked luggage so that we wouldn't have to make a trip to the drugstore when we got home. (Our mistake #2). So, my make-up collection was basically obliterated at the liquid/gel bin and my perfume, which I forgot was in my purse, triggered the metal detector at X-Ray. This was distressing since I had to throw away around $100 worth of merchandise at TSA. After a strenuous (and fruitless) argument with TSA, I finally made a run for the gate where my husband went to try to catch the plane (not very presentably I might add considering the amount of clothing and I had to remove at TSA since the number of "suspicious" items in my carry on triggered a quite deft search of my person and belongings). This is where this long-winded blog entry becomes the compliment I had orginally intented. At t the gate for the 7:40 am PHL-HOU-OKC flight, which we missed by 25 seconds - were two CSR's and a supervisor (I am assuming she is a supervisor because of the take-charge customer service she immediatly provided us - and if she isn't - she needs to be promoted ASAP) named Linda. Linda first wanted to know why check-in did not call to let the gate to let them know we were coming - I did not have the answer to that, since we received basically zero customer service from the 4 staff members at the terminal. Then, when she heard me telling my husband what had happened at TSA after he ran ahead, she first found us a seat on the 2:45 PHL-CHI-STL-OKC flight, then she walked with us to TSA to try to retrieve my surrendered belongings to put in our checked baggage. The TSA screener of course would hear none of this and so Linda walked us to our gate for the later flight and told us if we needed anything we knew where to find her. So we settled in for a long stay at SWA gate D-4. After calming down and accepting our situation, I decided I would go find a TSA supervisor and try to plead my case with a little more reverence. When I got back to the TSA check in at the E terminal, I found out that Linda had already been back to TSA and tried again to retreive my brand-new bottle of perfume and cosmetics and get them in my checked bags. About 15 minutes before our flight after a very long afternoon of dodging credit card solicitors in the airport mall, we were finally getting ready to board and who do we se all the way over from E terminal at the end of what I am sure was a very long day for her - but Linda! She had come to let us know she had been through the ringer with TSA and my belongings were already thrown out, she had addressed the situation at check-in as to why we got no help attempting to catch our flight and she was checking one last time to see if we needed anything else before we left her airport. My husband and I both have an extensive back ground in customer service and I currently work as a receptionist in law enforcement so we both know how long a day can get epecially when it starts with a problem. I am sure she had other things come up between 7 am and 3 pm, but she thought of us continually during the day and tried everything she could imagine to make us happy. Even though I learned a very expensive lesson at TSA and we spent a very long day at the airport, we left Phily and continued on to OKC as happy as possible thanks in whole to Southwest Airlines employee Linda from Phily. (ps- the lady stationed at D-4 on the afternoon of 12-5-2006 was also an outsatnding example of what SWA CSR's are all about!!) Thanks and we will be back flying SWA soon, thanks to Linda! Amy and Shane Pepperman ... View more