Southwest Airlines Community

I always avoided that other airline so I don't recall their exact color scheme. I just remember that they had a star on their planes, not as nice as yours, of course. hehe I agree with my fellow Scott that a special livery for the new Dulles service would be great, but it can't be "Capitol One" because that's too close to the name of a credit card company in Richmond! Maybe you could just paint a parade of lobbyists marching down both sides of the plane toward a Capitol dome on the tail. That would represent DC as authentically as the Texas flag represents Dallas. ... View more

At the risk of sounding heretical, I have to say that something about that big blue star makes me think of the late, not-so-great Texas International Airlines, a part of the evil empire that tried to keep Southwest out of the skies in the 1960s and 1970s. Maybe it's poetic justice that Southwest is now flaunting that star all over the country. ... View more

When a certain monopoly carrier now based at DFW Airport first inagurated its DC-3 "Flagship" service between New York LaGuardia and Chicago Midway in the mid-1930s, one of the two daily roundtrips was called "The American Eagle" and the other was called "The American Arrow". I think they used the same names in both directions, but each flight also had a separate flight number. Virgin Atlantic has recently started running radio ads in the Washington market promoting their Flight 22 from Washington Dulles to London Heathrow as "The Diplomat". However, I can't find any reference to this name on their Web site. ... View more

I once worked as a Customer Service Agent for a regional airline at Denver Stapleton. It always amused me to see how little the general public knows about airline operations, especially in regard to crew and aircraft scheduling over the course of a day. Lots of people were convinced that we had one airplane and two pilots who did nothing but fly back and forth between Denver and Sheridan, Wyoming all day long! Since there were a few occasions when a crew and and an aircraft actually did repeat a route twice in a row, nothing could convince some people that the crew they just flew in with was now on its way to Grand Junction rather than headed back to Sheridan. Looking forward to seeing you guys at Washington Dulles this fall. ... View more

First, it's great to hear that Southwest will be coming to Washington Dulles this fall. For those of us who live in Northern Virginia, BWI is just too far to drive at rush hour. When I worked for a company that trained pilots from corporate flight departments and regional airlines, I got to ride along in the cockpit jumpseat a number of times in different types of aircraft ranging from EMB-120s to 737s. (Rough duty). You can't imagine what the view is like up there. The view from the cabin doesn't begin to compare. Watching an IMAX movie about flying in a balloon might come close. On a clear night at 35,000 feet, you can easily make out the lights of cities 200 miles away. Dallas and Austin look like they're right next door. I probably wouldn't be able to jumpseat any more with the stricter security regulations today, so I'm glad I got the chance when I could. Not for nothing do pilots sometimes joke that they can't believe they get paid to fly. ... View more