Trip Report: Southwest Airlines (B737-800) Economy SAN-PHX

Posted in Non-Alliance, Southwest Airlines

The Details

  • Flight: WN1781
  • Aircraft: B737-800
  • Class: Economy
  • Seat: 3A
  • Route: San Diego (SAN)-Phoenix Sky Harbor (PHX)
  • Distance: 368miles
  • Duration: 54min
  • Departure: 5:18PM
  • Arrival: 6:12PM

The Preflight

After spending a few days visiting family in San Diego, it was time to fly home to Indianapolis. Rather than fly with the usual American, Alaska, or United; I decided to give Southwest a chance. Despite flying over 270 times, I had actually never flown Southwest before.

Thanks to an empty TSA PreCheck lane, I was airside from drop-off in about five minutes with my mobile boarding pass. Our B737-800, registration N8675A, was a seven-year-old aircraft delivered to Southwest in December 2015. She was one of 207 B737-800s in the WN fleet.

I decided to purchase EarlyBird Check-In for this ticket and I was awarded boarding position A54. Boarding began promptly at 4:45PM.

The Flight

Southwest offers a total of 175 economy seats on board their B737-800s arranged in a 3-3 configuration. Despite being A54, I actually got a window seat in the second row of the cabin, seat 3A.

Each seat was standard 17.6″ wide and had 32″ of pitch.

The only seat feature was a single tray table in the seatback. Southwest does not offer in-seat power or USB ports on their aircraft.

Boarding took about twenty minutes and we pushed back four minutes early at 5:11PM. We took off from runway 27 at 5:18PM.

There was an uncharacteristically thick cloud layer over San Diego on our ascent.

Once in the air, I connected my iPhone to the inflight entertainment app on my phone which was really good. There was a wide selection of movies and TV shows to enjoy

10 minutes after take-off, the flight attendants came through with a quick beverage service. I just had a cup of water with the pretzels.

Just as we reached cruising altitude, we began our descent into Phoenix.

Downtown Phoenix
Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport

We landed 13 minutes ahead of schedule at 6:12PM on runway 7R in sunny Phoenix. The taxi to our gate did take a while as we pulled in at 6:28PM. Thanks for the ride!

I enjoyed this short domestic flight with Southwest from San Diego to Phoenix. Compared to American Airlines which also flies this route, I would happily take the extra inch of legroom (32″ with Southwest) over the Main Cabin (31″) on American.

Leave a Reply