Its no wonder so many airlines are unable to compete with Southwest. They are unable to get the simplest idea - Do right by the customer. They solve for short term revenue by nickel and diming customers - at the expense of customer loyalty. Below is one horror story I had with trying to change tickets and getting screwed by one of the formerly 'Big' airlines that are getting their butt kicked by Southwest.

I booked a trip for Europe on Continental, but went into escrow on a house I had been trying to buy for 6 months. They charged me for each ticket - somewhere in the neighborhood of $100-$200 each (I can't remember) for changing my itinerary, and gave me only 1 year from the change date to complete the new flight, and said I had to get 2 tickets of equal or greater value. As my wife was a teacher - we could only go to Europe during the summer - so the end date of our trip would be longer than a year - so we had to travel during spring break. We wanted to go to Florida, but we could not find a flight that was equal or greater value so we had to settle for a trip to Hawaii which ended up costing about $1400 a ticket for really crappy flight times and layovers. Despite my frequent flyer miles and my 12+ year association with Continental, that was the last time I flew on the airline - 4 years ago.