Fly with a Song in Your Heart
Written: Jan 26 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: incredibly friendly staff everywhere, lots of leg room, in-flight entertainment, early boarding
Cons: narrow seats and aisles, tiny bathrooms, one flight was late, pay for food
The Bottom Line: Given the opportunity, you can bet I'll fly Song again.
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| quasar's Full Review: Song Airlines |
I've been pretty unhappy with a lot of airlines lately. It seems like every flight I've taken in the last few years involved dealing with surly flight attendants, incompetent gate agents, and downright nasty airport staff (which isn't necessarily the airline's responsibility but added to the unpleasantness). I just flew Song Airlines for the first time and was surprised at just how pleasant they made the experience.
Song and Delta are in a new terminal at Boston's Logan Airport and I'd never been inside before. It's a large terminal designed fairly differently than other terminals and I wound up waiting in the wrong line to check in for my flight. Rather than making me go wait on another line, they checked me in anyway, taking care of my checked bags and printing out a boarding pass for me while telling me what to do differently next time without making me feel like an idiot. They were also very patient as I added a name tag to my new bag when I realized I'd forgotten to do that earlier. They then gave me complete and accurate directions to my gate rather than the typical bad directions I usually get at airports, and sent me on my way.
Although there was still an hour before my flight was scheduled to leave, the gate was already staffed. I discovered that I'd been given a window seat instead of the aisle seat I'd requested but the gate agent changed it for me without any difficulty or muttered comments or other nonsense. They started boarding 50 minutes before the flight, resulting in a leisurely and unpressured boarding. Most airlines used to regularly begin boarding 45 minutes before flights but in recent years that's been cut shorter and shorter. It was a real pleasure not to deal with the now expected mad rush.
Despite being on midsized planes (757), both of my flights had four attendants (similar airplanes on other airlines would have been staffed with two or three people). One of them stood by the entrance to the plane, said hello to everyone, helped people to their seats, answered questions, and just was incredibly friendly. You might be noticing a theme. Other than one incident I'll mention a bit later, every single person I encountered at Song was both incredibly friendly and incredibly helpful.
The airplane itself sat six to a row, three on each side. The seats were on the narrow side for airline seats and the aisles were also somewhat narrower than normal, but they make up for it with comfortable seats and gobs of legroom. Fortunately I was able to fly with the armrests up and with a child in the middle seat on my flight with a full row. I think the experience would have been much less pleasant with a full row of adults with armrests down.
Small is the keyword for the bathrooms, too. Even for airplane restrooms they're minute. There is enough room to use the facilities (barely) but there's no extra space at all. The sinks are also problematic; the angle of the faucet makes it difficult to actually get your hands wet. The restrooms do use a fancy lemon verbena soap that smells wonderful but it gave my hands fits.
Song offers free non-alcoholic drinks (soda, juice, water, coffee, tea) but everything else must be purchased. Alcohol is $5 a pop; sandwiches, snack baskets, and other real food is in the vicinity of $6-8 and individual candy bars are $2. You can pre-order food online or order off of a menu handed out toward the beginning of the flight. Very few folks seemed to actually order anything. I might have gotten something since despite a morning flight I had been up for hours and hadn't eaten yet, but the available menu options were incredibly unappealing. It's just as well, since just about the first thing I saw in Orlando was a Nathan's.
Each seat comes with a personalized entertainment system that plays music, television, movies, and games as well as provides flight information. The movies are late first run or out of the theaters but not yet on DVD and cost $5 each. Games are $5 for all you can play, and everything else is free. The screen is miniscule so I really don't recommend watching a movie you haven't seen before. Also, since it's not timed by the flight staff, it's entirely possible to pay for a movie and not get to the ending before you land. The flight information was interesting, providing maps of your current position, distance travelled, speed, and outside temperature, but it really needed to also supply the local time for either the departure city, the arrival city, or both. My biggest question during any flight is always "how much longer?" and this would be an easy and pain free way to get that answered.
My biggest complaint with both of my flights is that Song plays loud and sometimes unpleasant music in the cabin from the moment you board until just before takeoff. It was loud enough that I couldn't drown it out with my headphones and I really resented being forced to listen.
I did have one other minor problem. The one time I used the call button it took seven minutes to get the button answered. I needed some water to take some medicine, but when I told the attendant she said they'd be coming through with drinks shortly. A different attendant must have heard, though, because she brought me water a minute later. The drinks cart didn't come through for another ten minutes. That's the only time on either of my flights or during my airport experiences that I found any Song employee less than incredibly helpful.
I keep harping on the friendliness of the Song employees, but that's because it really does make an enormous difference. Even when there were delays or problems, they didn't bother me as much because I felt like they were being dealt with and that people were trying their best to give me a pleasant and safe experience and to meet my needs. My return flight didn't even start boarding until 20 minutes after it was originally scheduled to leave but, despite having been at the airport for a long time, it didn't really bother me. The gate staff handled all inquiries nicely without getting visibly exasperated or annoyed and when we finally did board it was done quickly but efficiently and without the chaos that normally accompanies a rush job. The gate agents on arrival in Orlando were able to add my Delta SkyMiles account to my round trip flight despite having already flown one of the legs and didn't give me any sort of lecture that I should have done it earlier (which would have been entirely justified).
It comes down to this: things that might have irritated me on other flights didn't irritate me on Song because I felt like everyone was trying very hard to make my flight as pleasant as possible and they actually seemed to care that I have a good experience. That can't change the smaller seats, the miniscule size of the bathrooms, or stop delays from occurring, but it can make all of those things much more bearable. Given the opportunity, you can bet I'll fly Song again.
Recommended:
Yes
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