On my most recent trip to central WI (two weekends in a row of weddings), we were flying with our 2 month old for the first time and our toddler for the umpteenth time but a new adventure nonetheless with both. The airline, as usual was Midwest Airlines. Wider seats and cookies combined with comparable fares and a small connecting airport make it our preferred carrier to WI, it's a shame their only flight from DFW is Milwaukee.
I had booked the tickets in April since I saw a fare too good to pass up and although the flights were late in the evening, the layover in Milwaukee was short and flying at the end of June should have been a drought in TX so we should have everything running smoothly to make the connection, maybe some weather delays in Milwaukee but that's the last leg.
Well given this years weather one of the almost constant storms delayed us for nearly an hour in TX which should have eaten our entire layover time in Milwaukee making it next to impossible to make our connection. To make things even more interesting they hadn't given us our boarding passes for the connection in TX since the only available seats were exit row and our kids make us ineligible.
We landed with 10 minutes to spare and I took the toddler, carry-on, and the toddler's car seat while my wife had our infant and her car seat. I ran to the gate and saw the boarding status flashing on the display. I started waiting in line to talk to the counter. My wife went down and checked, they said they weren't boarding, I went down and double checked and they said that the displays were on a timer and they weren't boarding.
Once we got to the front of the line we found out that our plane from Milwaukee had been downgraded so they were one seat short of fitting us. I was thinking about how much it was going to suck to either get a hotel room for the night (or camp out at one of my cousin's places), or rent a car to drive 3.5-4 hours starting at 10 p.m. at the earliest.
Then the offer. Three free round trip tickets for the bump and a ride to the destination airport. I thought they were just going to pay for a rental car for us to drive and I asked about it, the ticket agent said no, we'll drive you. They took our luggage tag to pull our bag and told us to go to the ticket counter to get our bag, and the "limo" would be waiting out front. My wife and I, being the pessimists we are thought that they just meant a nice car.
We got our bags and sure enough, they led us outside where a black stretch limo was waiting with a couple other passengers. Their trunk was nearly full so a second driver offered his car. I, once again being less than optimistic, looked at the car behind the limo and thought "this sucks" since it was only a sedan of the 300m type vehicle. The driver led us past that car to the white stretch limo behind it. It wasn't fully stocked (only water and soda) and unfortunately we didn't think to ask if they would get us to our destination (about a half hour from the airport) so we had to wait for our ride to show up, but considering our treatment and the myriad of excuses the airline could have used, with weather delays and the like we can't complain about a limo ride and free trip back to central WI when we head up next.
We fly the airline quite a bit and this pretty well cements them as our go-to airline for getting to WI, unfortunately they only fly from DFW to Milwaukee but luckily WI is our most frequent destination.
Just thought it would be nice to share an non-horror airline story...
I had booked the tickets in April since I saw a fare too good to pass up and although the flights were late in the evening, the layover in Milwaukee was short and flying at the end of June should have been a drought in TX so we should have everything running smoothly to make the connection, maybe some weather delays in Milwaukee but that's the last leg.
Well given this years weather one of the almost constant storms delayed us for nearly an hour in TX which should have eaten our entire layover time in Milwaukee making it next to impossible to make our connection. To make things even more interesting they hadn't given us our boarding passes for the connection in TX since the only available seats were exit row and our kids make us ineligible.
We landed with 10 minutes to spare and I took the toddler, carry-on, and the toddler's car seat while my wife had our infant and her car seat. I ran to the gate and saw the boarding status flashing on the display. I started waiting in line to talk to the counter. My wife went down and checked, they said they weren't boarding, I went down and double checked and they said that the displays were on a timer and they weren't boarding.
Once we got to the front of the line we found out that our plane from Milwaukee had been downgraded so they were one seat short of fitting us. I was thinking about how much it was going to suck to either get a hotel room for the night (or camp out at one of my cousin's places), or rent a car to drive 3.5-4 hours starting at 10 p.m. at the earliest.
Then the offer. Three free round trip tickets for the bump and a ride to the destination airport. I thought they were just going to pay for a rental car for us to drive and I asked about it, the ticket agent said no, we'll drive you. They took our luggage tag to pull our bag and told us to go to the ticket counter to get our bag, and the "limo" would be waiting out front. My wife and I, being the pessimists we are thought that they just meant a nice car.
We got our bags and sure enough, they led us outside where a black stretch limo was waiting with a couple other passengers. Their trunk was nearly full so a second driver offered his car. I, once again being less than optimistic, looked at the car behind the limo and thought "this sucks" since it was only a sedan of the 300m type vehicle. The driver led us past that car to the white stretch limo behind it. It wasn't fully stocked (only water and soda) and unfortunately we didn't think to ask if they would get us to our destination (about a half hour from the airport) so we had to wait for our ride to show up, but considering our treatment and the myriad of excuses the airline could have used, with weather delays and the like we can't complain about a limo ride and free trip back to central WI when we head up next.
We fly the airline quite a bit and this pretty well cements them as our go-to airline for getting to WI, unfortunately they only fly from DFW to Milwaukee but luckily WI is our most frequent destination.
Just thought it would be nice to share an non-horror airline story...
