The original "low cost" airline, Southwest is nowhere near as bad as EasyJet and scores highly with me across most points.

Southwest is ideal for short flights, especially on the west coast for that Vegas weekend, or a trip up to Seattle. Cheap and simple, and you still get free soda and pretzels, which is perfectly fine. Southwest is almost always on time, even if they do sing annoying songs from time to time.

Granted, there is a bit of a low class factor when flying Southwest, (just look at the number of "Landry's Seafood Shack" and "You can be a real estate mogul in 9 days" adverts in the magazine), but there's also no pretension, and something about that "to hell with it ya'll, let's make money" attitude is quite refreshing.

Also, Southwest has by far the best frequent flyer program out there in terms of simplicity and the ease of getting a new ticket. Purchase online 4 times regardless of the length of your flight and, bam!, free flight anywhere they go. Combine that with Visa cards and other schemes and two free flights a year is within most people's grasp.

The Drawbacks:

1) The Southwest Airlines cattle-call. I guess their "no assigned seat" system is supposed to save time, but the level to which humanity drops when asked to line up for a Southwest flight is truly stone age. Men push women, women kick men... slight exaggeration, but who needs the stress?

2) The dreaded Southwest Airlines "snack pack" - On transcontinental flights, of which SWA now has several, Southwest has attempted to compensate for their lack of food service by offering a "snack pack". Basically this consisted of some chips and a strange stick of something resembling Spam. It's one of those awful situations where you wouldn't ordinarily touch it but because you're so hungry you eat it anyway.

3) Transcon. Stuck in a 737 for a 5-6 hour flight is simply no fun, especially with the aforementioned snack pack. Also, most Southwest transcon flight stop once, twice, even three times. The only reason to fly this way is when it's free. Fortunately Southwest makes that easy.

4) No more party seats. Ok, they probably caused a few annoyances, but for some reason, Southwest used to have a few rows of seats turned backwards so that 6 seats faced each other. These inevitably became boisterous social hubs where friends were made and toasts were toasted, especially on flights to and from Vegas. It's a pity they were eliminated.

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