Place: Wendy's
Lunch: Bacon Portabella Melt (single), chili, grape Fanta
This sandwich sure seems familiar. Web sources match it up to the Bacon Mushroom Melt of 2011. Except with "portabella" (Wendy's spelling) mushrooms. I always thought it was spelled "portabello", but a Google search revealed that people and restaurants go either way. My spell-check doesn't like either spelling, and in both cases suggests "Portability". Portable mushrooms? Has spell-check ever tried hand-carrying around mushrooms sauteed in butter, let alone drenched in liquid cheese like on this sandwich?
Stupid spell-check.
Anyway, the burger is actually pretty decent, but I wouldn't go out of the way for one. You can get it in a single or double.
There are certain milestones every city wants to hit before it's considered all grown up. The big milestone for any city with commercial air service is getting Southwest Airlines. And this weekend, we got them.
On Saturday afternoon, N929WN, a Southwest Boeing 737-700, flew in from Southwest's home base in Dallas. On Sunday morning, that aircraft made its first scheduled revenue flight, officially making us the 77th city Southwest serves.
Southwest replaced AirTran's service here. AirTran was acquired by Southwest a few years ago, and the phasing out of that brand is still in process. Not all AirTran cities will continue to be serviced by Southwest. We sort of got lucky there.
Initially, we get service only to Chicago-Midway. This means I'll almost never use them out of the local airport. Give me DAL or DEN non-stops and I'll stop driving to other airports to use Southwest.
Southwest's big selling point is low fares (though truth be known, my experience is that Southwest isn't really all that low anymore) but there are other benefits. Major aircraft being one of them. Southwest operates Boeing 737's exclusively, and will be operating the first 737's seen in this market in years. That's an amazing statement considering the 737 dominates the single-aisle aircraft market.
Most of the aircraft for local flights are smaller regional Embraers or Bombardiers. Some of these are REALLY small. And the MD-80's Delta and Allegiant fly don't count because I hate MD-80's. That leaves United, who flies an Airbus A-300 series in once or twice a day. Frontier did briefly too, but went back to E190's.
Operating efficiency and quality of service is another perk. I'm amazed at how quickly Southwest can turn a flight around. I love watching the process. Employees, especially flight crews, tend to be fun people who are encouraged to put a little personality into their job. They make the other discount airlines look amateur by comparison.
I also love that I can book a flight just a few days in advance without being punished for doing so. On most airlines, regular fares increase as the date to the flight approaches and the flight fills up. So the same class seat I booked a month ago for $400 may be $700 or more if I tried to book it today instead. I once was booking a flight on a major airline, and the price increased WHILE I WAS BOOKING THE SEAT. I got the quote, went through the process, had my payment info inputted, and when I clicked the last button, I got a warning screen that the price had increased since I'd started the booking process a few minutes previous, asking if I wished to continue.
Seriously?
But with Southwest, I've never seen that. I can look a day or a month into the future and see the same price. I have some of the prices memorized on certain routes.
Hey! It's October!
I love October.
