The Bus in the Sky By David Wygant

Its summer travel season and I am off to Hawaii tomorrow, so i thought i would share a recent travel related adventure with you all….

By the way airports are great places to meet people.

Recently I was sitting in the Las Vegas airport and I realized – why would anybody actually want to fly Southwest?

They just landed the flight, you get three minutes to board the plane so they remain on time – basically I think Southwest should just move all of their terminals to the Greyhound bus terminal, because really Southwest is just the bus in the sky.

Everybody’s lined up in their little groups like robots, waiting to get on the plane. They then hustle on the plane so that they can go find a seat next to somebody they don’t want to sit next to in the first place – really if you think about it, flying on Southwest is a great way to meet people. You can pick and choose whom you want to sit next to!

On the plane ride here, I actually got on the plane and I was going to sit down, and there was this perfect seat in the front of the plane. This guy was sitting there in the corner all by himself, and everybody was walking by him and I couldn’t figure out why.

So I go put my bag in the overhead compartment, and as I start to sit down, all I can smell is the lovely smell of underarm sweat! Apparently, this man didn’t believe in using deodorant.

It’s amazing that a person can get on an airplane in a public place and smell like they just finished a six-hour workout. He smelled so bad, he made Burger King and McDonald’s smell delicious – which is definitely a tough thing to do.

So as I was waiting for the bus in the sky to get home, I realized it’s just not the most civil and humane way to do it. So now I’ve decided that Southwest needs to land in the middle of the city, basically right next to the Greyhound buses, so you have the two options.

This plane I’m on right now has been to six places – it went from Midland to Albuquerque to Phoenix to Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Some people actually got on in Albuquerque to save $3.50 over all the rest of the airlines so that they can spend six hours in the sky instead of spending just two hours flying direct from Albuquerque to LA. Time is worth more to me than saving $3.50!

It’s pretty amazing, because I once flew Southwest – well, I had to, there was nothing else to fly – Southwest is generally my last option. I flew on this flight that took me from LA to St. Louis and I was sitting down next to someone who was going to Long Island, New York. He had six stops to get there!

It is literally a bus – it flies up in the air, touches down for three and a half minutes, everyone hustles like a bunch of sheep to get on the plane. The cheery Southwest flight attendants then tell some kind of joke – and they are pretty good, they’re a lot better than the sourpusses that work for American Airlines and United.

I asked the guy with six stops going to Long Island how much his airfare was and he told me it was like $265. Do you know I fly to New York City regularly on American Airlines for $299? I told him that he’d saved $34 to spend the entire day on the airplane, and he said, “huh. I guess the commercials don’t tell the truth!”

Let me tell you guys – I’m a huge fan of saving time. If you think about it, unless you are socializing in the aisles of the airplane, flirting with everybody on there – what’s the point of being up there for nine hours just to save $34?

It’s just not worth the extra time. I’d rather spend my time in the airport, flirting with the person next to me, having some fun and exchanging phone numbers – and then getting on that plane knowing that I had a good time and I can get somewhere automatically.

You don’t really need to fly a bus in the sky. I think that Southwest should change the shape of their planes to look like buses.

One more thing about flying – on a 45-minute flight, you really don’t need to give out peanuts and water and everything else. You don’t need to feed the people for 45 minutes! It’s ridiculous – people can survive not eating for 45 minutes. It’d actually do some people good!

Perhaps instead of offering peanuts, they should offer some stretching exercises instead. People don’t need to be entertained 24/7.

How about this idea: how about a speed dating event in an airplane for 45 minutes – that would be more fun!