I'mOffOne

So, these pilots had just picked their way through weather to get to DEN, performed an approach and go-around during windshear conditions, and then diverted to an offline airport? Offline airports are higher workload for everyone due to the lack of resources, so the captain would not have made the call to go there unless the weather was blocking their escape routes from DEN. And when the captain determines that they're in danger of hitting another aircraft if they try to squeeze between the other aircraft boxing them in we call them "lazy" and think they should be written up? (Note: an awful lot of ground accidents have happened with wingwalkers present - the final responsibility for clearance of a moving airplane is with the captain, even if she can't see her wing.) The rules prohibit very little when, and only when, a PIC in an emergency situation can justify that their actions were the safest course of action at the time (see FAR 91.3). A captain who dents a wing to make a wheels up time so they don't get stuck in COS is not going to be protected from anything, and that would have added many more hours to everyone's delay. Also, no one wants to time out at an offline airport. There are no scheduled Southwest hotels there, so even though the crew wasn't legal to fly they would have to either deadhead back to DEN on the same airplane or get ground transportation to DEN that night or the next day. Not fun.

I'm glad the captain was able to get everyone on the ground safely in what sounds like very challenging conditions. We really do take that for granted in the US, I guess.

chuck1

As I said, the Captain who timed out did a lot of extra work. She and her first officer manually checked the names of all the reboarding passengers off a faxed manifest while the next crew prepared the plane. This was done when we were let off the plane at COS for about an 1 1/2. While they weren't legal to fly, they did keep working to keep the process going.
They then deadheaded to DEN as passengers. They did not run off the hotels in COS.
I just wish that someone would have parked the plane more carefully and saved us many hours.

I do think part of the problem is that at many (if not most) WN destinations, diversions airports served by WN aren't such a distance.

ABQ, AMA and SLC come mind for DEN, but if there is weather and you've already circled and missed two approaches, you may not have the fuel to fly another 350-400 miles.

Is there another Southwest city where the distances to the next Southwest city are greater (besides the new international cities)?

COS is 70 or so.
Other possibilities are CYS, PUB, GJT, AND FNL.
I assume they wouldn't include EGE as I believe that requires a special certification but I could be wrong.