We just need to look for and use alternatives within the whole journey.

Both flights left on time and arrived early. The cabin crew was friendly and accommodating. Okay, there was no first class and no food served, but the seats were comfortable, the seat pitch a couple of inches better than what is found in the coach section on most legacy carriers, and soft drinks and snacks were served at no charge.

Also, Southwest’s Rapid-Rewards frequent flyer plan usually has seats available on the days I want to fly. That has not always been the case on the legacy carriers.

When I can’t fly Southwest, my choices are Jet-Blue and Air-Tran. I won’t give another dollar to a legacy carrier until they start treating me as a valued customers.

We taking a trip to Denver with my patents next year, and I think we’ll take the train for a different experience. Again, way more relaxing and lots of leg and stretch room.

Hourly flights, friendly, attractive flight attendants and flight crew with a sense of fun, simple fare structures, a dedicated gate @ LAX and SFO for the Freeway Flyer, $20 on the late flights each way, $40-50 during the day. Every once in a while you could fly to Burbank and San Diego and Lake Tahoe.

That worked too well, they made money and then got too big for their britches and started losing money flying to places like Medford and Yakima and Seattle and Spokane, and got eaten by USAir, ending common sense in the airline industry for ever.

Their method, which involves a variable pricing structure, “rules,” restrictions, Saturday-night stayovers, and virtuoso nickle-and-diming, is guaranteed to engender hatred from all but the most phlegmatic or stoic. I actually have a candidate solution, at least for heavily-travelled routes, and it is this:

1: Get rid of schedules. Just have a gate for LAX, a gate for SFO, a gate for MIA, and a gate for any other city where you can fill up an airplane in an hour.

2: Share that gate among airlines. (Let them fight each other for it – leave me out of it!)

3: No advance reservations or purchase, no different fares, and charge for luggage by weight, since that’s a true expense the airlnes must bear. Pay at the gate and board immediately.

If this seems similar to a bus, so mote it be. The plane flies full and profitably, everybody pays the same and flies when they want to. Never rush for the plane or worry about security taking too long – there’s no “your flight” to miss.

Will this work? I honestly don’t know. I’m hardly an expert in airline operations (or much of anything else) and it clearly won’t work in cases where there’s a low volume of traffic since it would tie up a plane, passengers, and gate for many hours. But if it will work, or even if it might, I’d love to see it tried. Surely the airlines have enough smart people, even if they keep them hidden, to realize that the current situation is unstable and untenable.

But I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet.

On a slightly more positive note, we flew American Airlines on our way to Buenos Aires, and despite everyone’s complaints and their recent issues, we were pleased with our flight.