This past weekend, we flew to Baltimore from Atlanta on Southwest Airlines. As I posted last week, I had not flown Southwest in about five years. I figured I would post a quick review of our flight and my impressions of flying Southwest after such a long break.

On Friday we flew from Atlanta to Baltimore. Our flight was on time and as is par for the course these days, completely full. Luckily for us, we were traveling with my mother-in-law, who requires a wheelchair for travel, so one of us (me so I could schlep the bags) boarded with her while the other one boarded with their group. We took the second row on one side and had plenty of room for our bags overhead.

The flight back from Baltimore to Atlanta was similar, but we were delayed by about 40 minutes due to slow loading of luggage. The gate agent even made a plea for folks to apply for jobs with Southwest as I assume they are still short-staffed in some areas.

On our outbound flight my wife was boarding number B8 and our return she was A59, so it was not difficult to save the middle seat for her, even near the front of the plane. Boarding was efficient and we pushed back on time. Interestingly, flight attendants on our outbound flight wore masks, but on our way back, they did not. I would say it was about 10-20% mask wearers on both flights and in the airports.

We were served a beverage of choice on both flights along with pretzels. I also paid for internet both ways ($8 per flight) and while it was OK for web browsing and emails, it was significantly slower than Delta’s new Viasat internet that costs $5 per flight on most of their Atlanta-based aircraft.

In the end, Southwest was efficient, friendly and safe. I would compare it to a bus in the sky, but it got us where we needed to be. We only flew Southwest as we had a couple of credits to burn, but I would do it again if the flight times and cost made sense, even if it means going without the SkyClub and Comfort+ seats on Delta.

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