Southwest Airlines boards families with children between groups A and B. However Ashley Dowell was looking for four seats together. The family of five, including a baby, was on their way to Disney World.
They found three in the last row of their Boeing 737-800, and were struggling to juggle their bags and accoutrements for their baby. That’s when Wesley, one of the flight attendants on board, offered to hold 9-month old Alayna while they got themselves situated.
She was “screaming her head off for quite a while” while inflight so Wesley came back and offered to take her — walking her up and down the aisle, shushing her, and calming her. He did this for 15 minutes, “rubbing her back, walking up and down the aisle like it was just a day in the park” before returning her to her parents where she fell asleep.
This happened about a month ago, but it’s just gaining broad attention. And it was only a few weeks after another story of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant taking a child and walking her up and down the aisle to calm her and give her parents a break.
Unlike Etihad there’s no official onboard nanny program but Southwest Airlines flight attendants — one the whole — do seem to enjoy their jobs, and interact with passengers as human beings, and that makes being stuck in a metal tube seem so much more bearable. The extra inch or two of seat pitch on Southwest flights helps a lot, too.
Part of the Southwest Airlines culture has always involved having fun and that spirit involves keeping people happy. It’s infectious.
Unlike with Delta, I have never heard of Southwest having to lock flight attendants in their planes for fear that the attendants would run off at the first opportunity. People seem to enjoy working at Southwest.
“The family of five, including a baby, was on their way to Disney World.”
To each their own but, jesus, this sounds unbearable. Unsure why people do this to themselves.