I'm not a total outstation captive but after Delta absorbed my preferred carrier, they ended up with about 70% of the seats out of the local five gate airport. They're generally reliable, good with IRROPS when there are issues, and I have in general learned to stop worrying and love the ATL.
I gave United a try earlier this year since I'm all about the free stuff and you can essentially get miles with them from the top of a cereal box. For my $5 in airport security fees, I got an E-135 (VPS was one of the first places to get the nicely rehabbed 717s) and IRROPS recovery so incompetent that I had to promise my husband I would never book us on such an awful airline again. If I'd actually paid money for the flight I would have been sending letters to the DOT level of cluster****. I'm still saving my boxtops for United miles but the goal is to figure out how to use them on Lufthansa somehow.
Will end up using American a bit in the coming year to burn some gift cards, but it's barbie jets with less convenient hubs for usually no real price difference if booked more than about two weeks out.
I can and have gone to the airport a little over an hour away to burn some WN gift cards, but their IT system breaks over a two connection routing- I cannot get to San Francisco from PNS or ECP without doing a two ticket open jaw routing that costs a lot more than a single DL ticket from the airport that's just about in my backyard. Even though they've got a perfectly adequate domestic economy product, they just don't get me where I want to go a lot of the time.