Originally Posted by Cardboard55

I no longer travel heavily for work, but the answer here is really simple. Southwest had many direct flights to the places I needed to go regularly from the place I lived in. No one else did. During the several years that Southwest was my primary airline, I personally experienced no major issues (nothing worse than I experienced with American or United as my primary). So given the choice of flying another airline that would require a stop for almost every flight, probably doubling (or more) my total travel time and increasing the opportunity for mishaps, or an airline that has had issues but none that ever actually caused me a problem, I didn't find it particularly hard to decide. Real impact on every single trip vs. hypothetical impact at some isolated point in the future.