Both can be true. Some people will swear them off. Some won't. Some SWA will win back with steep discounting.

For me (I am affected), this is actually another in a series of recent events that are making me reconsider my preference for SWA. They are no longer a "cheap" airline, routinely more expensive than the other major carriers. Their planes are not nice anymore. I've flown on a few other airlines over the past few years and found their planes to be nicer with more features (like chargers and phone/tablet holders). And now this. The cancellations are one thing, but they totally botched the communication of it, and their practice of delaying flights throughout the day only to cancel half of them after several hours left people stranded.

Will I stop using them? We'll see how they respond, but they may not be my first choice anymore.

I’ll be driving 18 hours rather than risk a flight rescheduled 5 days (soonest available) after the original flight being cancelled, being cancelled again. Stuff sucks man. $2200 to rent a minivan for two days one way.

I feel bad for you/anyone having to pay extortionate rental car one-way rates because they're so variable/fickle. In future try something like below, before biting the bullet and paying full. But maybe in this circumstance with demand being what it is, there's no way around it.

https://blog.autoslash.com/secrets-to-getting-a-cheap-deal-o...

Yeah airline travelers are price conscious and it is a race to the bottom. If they offer some crazy sale or cheaper fares people will book it. Just look at Frontier/Spirit. They consistently get horrible reviews but people deal with it for a $50 flight.

People often try to say “airline travelers are price conscious” as if there are several options in the same price range and travelers will accept any reduction of quality or service to save a nickel (I’m not claiming you’re suggesting this). But in my experience with US domestic flights the options are basically one “cheap” decently tolerable itinerary, a few slightly cheaper itineraries that are like twice as long in total duration, and then a couple of slightly better itineraries with better amenities that literally cost like twice as much or more.

I just laugh at the upset attempts when you go to check in online: “get priority boarding and 2 inches of legroom for only an extra 50% on top of the ticket price.” I really don’t see much evidence that there was actually a race to the bottom. And I certainly won’t blame consumer preferences when I don’t see any options for slightly better service for slightly more money.

That depends on your city pair.

Boston to Las Vegas, Orlando, or San Francisco, I’ve got a wide variety of choices, 2-4 carriers flying more than that non-stops per day.

Flying from Des Moines to Presque Isle, Maine, I have only a bunch of 2 and 3 stops on United.

Boston is such a weird airport I'm not sure it's worth bringing up except as perhaps an exception that proves the rule.

BOS has the "advantage" of serving a fairly large population while also not being big enough to be a real hub for anyone[0], while being simultaneously big enough to have service from nearly everyone.

Unlike a lot of airports smaller or serving fewer people than BOS (and some of comparable size), you can get from BOS to a whole mess of hubs.

A few select routes (BOS to SFO as noted) are incredibly well-served because of the volume of lucrative business travel between the two and the fact that a whole mess of airlines already serve both airports.

[0] No, JetBlue doesn't count. Boston is as much a hub for them as CLE[1] was for Continental. I.e. a second class hub at best.

[1] CLE by comparison only really serves Cleveland. Columbus, Dayton, Cinci, Indy, Pittsburgh and probably a few others from a similar radius BOS draws from all have decent(ish) airports. All of those have basically the same problem as CLE or are worse in some way. I've flown through or into and out of all of them.

CVG is still a Delta hub

For the ~75,000 travelers directly impacted, it will probably have some long-term impact in their purchasing decisions.

But for the 329,925,000 other Americans, many of whom have a long history and belief in Southwest’s reputation for customer service and fair policies? They will have forgotten by next week.

Yeah but they're also possibly less the type to go out of their way to hunt for Southwest flights, which don't ever show up on aggregators

I wonder if they'll need to start working with aggregators after this fiasco? (Assuming they start losing their current customer base)

This actually is what prevents me from buying flights from them. The only time I do it is when someone asks for them specifically.