Southwest Airlines Flight 898

Southwest just stole my ticket and hung up on me. Never use Southwest. Terrible!!! I hope they go bankrupt!!!

The flight was delayed almost an hour. After they had finally boarded everyone, and the plane had back from the terminal, the captain came on to announce that we would be delayed a further thirty minutes because of a backup at LAX. Really, captain?
Over the course of waiting on the tarmac and flying through the air, we would further learn that LAX was backed up because of construction on one of its four runways. I know LAX uses only two runways for landing and two for taking off, so I assumed one of the out-​of-​commission runways was a landing one, but Southwest surely knew this as well, and they did. This wasn’t emergency construction. It was large scale and had been proceeding for weeks. So again, why did we all board the plane in such a hurry when we couldn’t even get off the ground?
The child behind me was not precious. Her parents thought she was precious, but she was a spoiled brat, and both parents were cowed enablers. She proceeded to play whatever games and movies she had on her iPad with the volume all the way up. Two separate passengers asked the parents to turn down their daughter’s volume, and the parents meekly complied – except that the kid then turned the volume back up, and the parents didn’t do anything. They didn’t turn it down again or tell their daughter why it was rude to turn the volume up when there are other people around.
When we finally landed at LAX, we had to wait another twenty-​five minutes on the tarmac because of ongoing Terminal 1 construction. Again, none of this was technically Southwest’s fault, but it actually was Southwest’s fault because it’s foreseeable that if you have fewer runways to use and fewer terminal gates to use, you won’t be able to land, deplane, board, and take off as quickly as usual.
While we were waiting on the LAX tarmac, the parents behind me thought it would be cute to FaceTime their parents or siblings or cousins or whomever they were staying with in L.A. «We landed! We’re stuck on the runway! Do you want to say hi to Lola, Tiffany? Here’s Tiffany! Tiffany, say hi to your Lola! Say hi, Tiffany! Tiffany, say hi! OK, I guess she doesn’t want to say hi! How are you!» I apologize for all the exclamation points, but Tiffany’s mother sure wasn’t apologizing for her rudeness. The entire plane could hear both ends of the conversation.
The call finally ended, and we thought our remaining ten minutes would finally be peaceful. (Why was Tiffany still awake at 11:15 p.m. anyway?) We were totally wrong, however, because as soon as the FaceTime ended, Frozen began. That’s right, Tiffany chose the final ten minutes of 140 people’s sanity to play Frozen loudly on her iPad. There was singing, but I thank God that we never had to suffer through «Let It Go.» I say I thank God, because if that child had started playing that song, her iPad would have continued functioning for maybe thirty seconds more before I or some other within-​his-​rights passenger would have destroyed it and in so doing – hopefully – taught Tiffany a lesson she would have never forgotten.
And of course after we landed, it took forever for our luggage to come down, and even after I had snuck up to the second level because that’s where all the pros get picked up at LAX’s Terminal 1, I was delayed yet again because there was late-​night construction that instantly turned the area into the second most annoying place in the world, the first being sitting on the plane in front of Tiffany. So I’ll give Tiffany that: She taught me that listening to someone using a circular saw to cut concrete isn’t the most annoying sound one could hear while waiting at LAX. And did I mention that they had hosed down the entire area because of the construction? So not only was I annoyed, but my shoes were all wet for no good reason.