[Watchful1]

I travel a lot. Over 100,000 miles per year and I usually deal with the larger airlines and while they aren't perfect, my bad experiences to date have been fairly minor.

Yes, I have had luggage not turn up at the airport before but never with such incompetence that I experienced yesterday and today with Southwest Airlines. To start the bag, along with the bags of numerous other passengers were sent to Ft Lauderdale for passengers on a plane to Tampa. The airline claims the bag tags were ripped off, but for so many bags? What kind of glue do they use on their tags because I often find it hard to remove bag tags when I want to. Then began the 12 or so phone calls and interactions to get the bag directed to the right place -- this started yesterday morning and the bag has still not arrived as of 12:30 PM in Orlando. We still have our fingers crossed. To top it off this is a bag for an autistic child so it contains items he needs, plus he is freaked out by the whole experience to the point that we may not be able to get him to go back on the plane to go home. he doesn't trust them. My husband opened a tracer and directions form with the airline yesterday morning in Tampa. He flew into Tampa so that my son could go to Cypress Springs on the way to Orlando, but that was ruined by the extra hour and a half in the airport. Then the phone calls started with no one knowing what to do with the bag in spite of the form that was filled in; they couldn't figure out that we were a family searching for a bag so they called all the various phone numbers causing a lot of confusion and extra time. Not only does their process and form fail, but no one has had the curtesy to attempt to help expedite the return of the bag in light of the owner's special needs. The people on the phone all have bad attitudes and behave as though they have had little or no training in the execution of their jobs and obviously no training in providing customer service.

I've always thought that Southwest was fine for commuting, but not good for a long haul and this experience has proved it to me. It's the airline that can't.

In addition, they have no concept of seating the disabled or understanding how that process should work correctly on a flight. They do provide a preboard, but without consideration as to where other passengers will sit with planes that are configured to maximize profits and not comfort or special needs.