This may be off-topic but thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, T H A N K Y O U!!!! for adding Minneapolis-St. Paul to your list of cities!! As a resident of Chicago, this is SOOO great and long long LONG overdue!
I think you'll find after only a short time that this will be one of your best adds to the schedule since Philly. Now I'm waiting (not necessarily holding my breath) for an LGA (LaGuardia) expansion since ATA exited there...
As an A-Lister who flies on SWA nearly every week, I'm also hoping that the Fly-By security lanes will also include a Business Select/A List line for baggage check too...
Luv Ya!!
Jeff
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As somebody who does an AWFUL lot of travel with Southwest into & out of my home in Chicago Midway, and as little as possible with the other guys at O'Hare, I will say that I've had the best of luck with my checked baggage at Southwest. Out of more than 60 one-way flights this year, my bag was delayed only once. I appreciate the level of effort and coordination required to make this all happen, and overall I think you all do a great job in this age where we're required to check our bags if we happen to use certain liquid products that don't come in the travel sizes.
However, I do have some questions/comments about how baggage is returned on the 3 carousels at Midway (good ol' #'s 6, 7, and 8). First off, things have improved a lot as far as the speed of baggage return the last several times I've flown - heck, last time my bag was even waiting for me at the carousel! I love it when that happens! However, most of the time it takes 15-20 minutes for my bag to reach me once I make it into baggage claim at Midway (which usually takes me 10 minutes or so to reach from the gate). A few things that I believe would make it better for the returns for us passengers are as follows, provided that such a lengthy time is required to coordinate all those bags:
1) I'd like to know in advance which ramp my bags will be coming out of (ie once I arrive at bag claim.) Many, many times I've had to wait along with about 200 other people between the three carousels for the computer boards or the TV monitors to announce which carousel the bag will be coming from. It gets VERY crowded in those areas, and usually the destinations are flashed on the carousel signs at the moment the bags start to come out, resulting in a mad passenger scramble to the appropriate carousel from the waiting areas. Other airports such as BWI have the flights posted on the carousels long before the bags start coming out, making for a much more orderly, less congested claim area.
2) I'd like to see better coordination between the carousels too. One particularly hectic night I arrived and there were three flights coming out simultaneously on carousel #7, and carousels #6 and #8 were both idle and empty. Can't the ramp folks avoid that kind of thing from happening?
I'm hoping that somebody from Midway baggage will see this and respond.
Thanks
Jeff
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