Yackers

I spent the weekend in D.C., which means I spent all day Friday and all day yesterday travelling.

There are always people on the plane who yack loudly for the entire flight. Listen people, no one wants to hear your life story for 4 hours. Not the people in the row in front of you, not the people in the row behind you, and certainly not the poor soul in the seat next to you who is getting yacked at. Seriously, I would rather sit in front of a fussy baby. It's a lot easier to tune out.

I flew on Southwest. They can turn around a plane in 20 minutes. What is their secret? First of all, they do a good job getting the cabin cleaned up before they land. For example, they ask us to fold up our blankets and return them before landing, instead of leaving them on the seat. As the last person is leaving the plane, a flight attendant walks behind them cleaning up so that by the time that passenger is off, they are ready to board.

Their second trick is the no-seat-assignment policy. (I have to give credit to Ed for this observation). The B-group and C-group always get in line the second they get to the terminal. The A's dally a little, but they are usually all lined up and waiting by the time boarding starts. Yesterday, the plane we would be on for our flight to Maryland arrived 20 minutes early to Oakland, and as soon as the passengers started to get off, everyone who wasn't in line jumped up and got in line. A Southwest employee announced that we wouldn't be boarding for 20 minutes, but no one budged. They all just stood there for 20 minutes (except for me - I was sitting in a chair reading my book). When we did start boarding, I noticed that no one but me joined the A-line late - I was the only one that wasn't in line. If you have an A-boarding pass, you can always get a great seat, even if you are the last A, so what's up with that?

At any rate, they are able to get every single passenger to get in line and be ready to go the second they are ready to board. That's why they can land a plane, get everyone off, and fill it back up in 15 minutes.