what i found pretty appalling was on a flight to FLL they overbooked the flight (on a 737, no less) by 52 people. 52?!! And many of those people had to be on a cruise ship that day. Perhaps we didn't see the whole side of the story, but who in their right mind would ever want to book a trip on an airline that overbooks like that? And no attempts were made (at least that I could see) on behalf of southwest to put those people on a different carrier as recompense for their mistake to make sure they got to FLL to make their cruise.

I haven't flown southwest in years, but after seeing how they handled their customers in a situation like that just reinforced my belief that sometimes it's just worth a little extra $ for reliability. People may say all publicity is good publicity, but in my case, there's no way I would willingly patronize that airline after what I've been watching.