As an airplane/airline enthusuast can you elaborate on that statement because I find it fascinating, as I regularlay fly United and Southwest for work and try to observe how they operate at the airports. I've heard Southwest for instance negotiates their own departure procedures to get higher faster and arrivals to do the same to get lower faster, at my home in TPA its fun to watch a plane on approach to 01L and see an SWA come frome nowhere and intercept the glidepath and land 1st. Once I flew Jet blue out of TPA and ther were 6 planes lined up at 19R and the captain came on and announced we were going ahead of everybody and we took off from a taxiway 1/3 up and cut everybody off.

 

Eric Walace

Well at American we turn on our probe heat just before pushback and Continental does after. Continental and American turn on all the hydraulic pumps before push where Southwest leaves them off until after the push. At American the Captian turns the start switch and the FO raises the start lever where Continental does the oposite. At American we turn the trim air on at the first flight of the day and leave it on for the whole flight day where Continental turns it off every leg. At American we start the number 2 engine first where I am told Alaska started number 1 first until recently. There are just a ton of little things like that between the different airlines.

 

My brother had a controller on his jumpseat one time and he asked the guy why it seems like Southwest get preferntial treatment and the controller said they often do that because Southwest will try to do whatever they ask even if its pushing their limits. As far as the JetBlue flight you may have had a wheels up time to meet and the other planes didn't. We were moved ahead of the line one night in Newark because there was weather of many of the departure fixes but not ours so they let us go.

Cool stuff

I bet that was interesting. What base?

It was a good experience. Everyone was mixed on a lot of things but for the most part still had good things to say about Express. I was out of IAH.