<p>It’s the small planes and airports that really charge. I can send my daughter first class from O’Hare to LaGuardia for the same price as O’Hare to Westchester Airport where the plane is too small for a first class with one seat on one side of the aisle and two seats on the other. Plus reliability is so much better flying on the bigger planes from major airports and should there be a problem there are at least 3 flights an hour. Finally, in the winter I spring for the extra cost of first class because if there’s a problem they are the first people to be taken care of which means she’ll be getting home or back to school asap. It’s worth the 20 extra minutes of driving for the much lower cost and high reliability.</p>
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<p>But this is a gamble on other airlines anyway. Because of a delay with our first flight, we recently missed the last Delta flight to our destination out of Atlanta; airtran had a flight that we could have taken but Delta would not put us on it. Said Delta doesn’t have a relationship with airtran, or something like that.</p>
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<p>Delta ended its interline agreement with Airtran or most other Low Cost Carriers a few years ago and now Airtran is part of Southwest, which doesn’t interline. If there was an Alaska, American, Continental, United, or US Airways flight available in your ticketed cabin, they would have put you on one of those flights provided it was not a weather or air traffic control delay.</p>
<p>I, too, was not aware that Southwest did not interline with other airlines until a couple of years ago when flying home from NYC via Baltimore. Baltimore was shut down because of a major snowstorm affecting the mid-Atlantic area, while the NYC airports were all clear. I was forced to wait two days for Baltimore to reopen since Southwest had no other connecting flights available elsewhere. While Southwest can be a great alternative thanks to no change fees and no luggage charges, it is not such a good option when problems arise in a city in which it has few connecting flights such as NYC.</p>
<p>The SW $10 early boarding fee does not always guarantee you an A boarding pass. It depends on how many people have paid it, and I think it’s always better to do it early. My experience has been if you add it on at the last minute, you go behind all the other people who have paid the $10 earlier. </p>
<p>If you wait until the last minute or at holiday time, SW is not always cheaper. However, since there are no change fees, it is not a gamble to book as early as possible when fares are less because there’s no hassle to change. </p>
<p>I travel enough and have two SW credit cards that H has had a companion pass to travel anywhere I go for free for over a year now (through 2012 at least). Great for visiting S2. We were able to make a weekend trip to see S2 perform last spring basically for the cost of a rental car and hotel. I will drive 2-3 hours on either end of a trip to take SW.</p>