Remember the theory that people vote with their "identities" rather than "self-interest"?

How long has Southwest been living on the reputation of being the scrappy little renegade, even though it is consistently among the top US airlines in number of passengers, revenue, and ability to cause other airlines to downsize capacity in a market?

How long has it lived on being "cheaper", even though it's often significantly more expensive - especially when you take bag fees out of the equation for elites on other airlines?

And yet.

"There's just something about Southwest."

Eh.

(Or it could be that most people don't really understand the new system, since it's more complex and not everyone sits around performing cost benefit analyses of frequent flyer programs like people at FT do.)