eponymous_coward

That's nice, but I have a lot of friends and family who aren't country bumpkins when it comes to flying on a plane, but they will NEVER hit even 25k a year (let alone whatever spend AA wants these days), and the days of lifetime elite for AA CC spend are long gone. I wouldn't tell them to fly AA over WN on a dare. If you fly 5-10 times a year, 1000-1500 miles round trip each time, domestic flights only, you're not an infrequent flyer. But you're sure not likely to be hitting any elite status. That description fits a TON of people.

Sure. Nobody is saying that you can use WN to fly to Europe. But half of the USA doesn't have a passport. Frequent international travel is more rare than you would think from reading FT trip reports about Bali. And there are folks who happily free agent their travel, internationally AND domestically, and choose WN for some pretty basic reasons (if you're in CA and do a ton of shorthaul, WN's schedule and destination list creams everyone else, for instance... and frequency/nonstop destination often wins over shiny DYWKIA card).

700+ planes is a heck of a "niche". And a lot of the "service" full service airlines offer are things people are happy to cast aside to save money or gain convenience in other ways. Let's see, do I want lounge access the one time in 18 months I fly overseas, assuming that I did it in coach, and thus send all my business to AA? Or do I want to be able to cancel/change my domestic ticket and have the funds 100% available for future use for up to a year, and send some flights to WN?

One would think that a process that people actually can follow and is consistently followed is probably a well designed one. If you need to beat things into people's heads to make it work, you probably have already failed to design your process correctly. WN's process works; I have a number, I know where I stand in the line to get on the plane, i don't have to go up into the line until the sign says the number on it.