In the early eighties, New York Air ran a promotion where on one day (it was a saturday) you could fly DCA-LGA or LGA-DCA in exchange for a ball point pen. My grandmother lived in manhattan at the time and my father and I took advantage and flew up in the morning and back in that evening for a total cost of 4 Bic pens.

As for People's: I flew them a LOT in college to visit my (opposite coast) girlfriend. But on one fateful winter evening in 1986, flying EWR-SFO on a peoples express 747 I was involved in an "incidnet." I wont go into details, but suffice to say that no one was killed and only a few folks were slightly injured, but we were definately seated with our heads between our legs in "crash position" when we landed at SFO. While the one way DCA-EWR-SFO flight cost only $69, it nearly cost a whole lot more. I flew home on American and did not fly at all for about five years. (as a postscript, the FAA determined that "severe fog, high winds, and questionable pilot training procedures" contributed to the incident).

Fast forward 12 years and 65,000 miles a year for 4 years has pretty much gotten me over white-knuckle syndrom, but I still feel better avoiding the cut-rate airlines...