Bob, there's no reason to get your knickers in a twist. The statement obviously does not apply to Frequent Flyers. They fly their preferred airlines regardless of the price for reasons that have nothing to do with price.
However, if you look at the general public who fly 5 or fewer times per year, the statement is true. You don't know how often on the airplane I have to listen to passengers whine about the fares and the lack of meals and other amenities. One of the problems facing the "legacies" today is that the passengers think we should still serve hot meals, and be fully provisioned with a blanket and pillow for each seat, but do it for the same ticket price as SWA.
By the way, if I go to Wal-Mart (which I don't as a matter of labor principle), Wal-Mart does not have to sell it's products below cost in order to get me to buy. Yes, they may have one or two loss leaders on any given weekend, but they are not having to sell everything in the store below cost. One could say that they are the SWA of the retail business, and I don't mean that as an insult. Wal-Mart and SWA have both pretty much cornered the discounter's niche in their respective industries.
The analogy falls apart, though, when you look at other retailers. Nordstrom's, for instance, does not have to offer a day at Nordstrom's spa for $49.95. They attract a different customer.
At one time, AA, UA, DL, and U all attracted a different customer from SWA. Today, we are all competing for the same customer. We used to not care about the SWA customer because we could depend upon the business traveler who was not going to participate in unassigned seating, cattle call boarding, or no interline baggage transfers because he/she didn't have to.
Today, in order to fund the executives' deferred compensation packages (see also Delphi) and the bonusses awarded even though the company is losing money (see also AMR), corporate travel departments are booking road warriors on SWA unless the rest of us match the price. And, they are not allowing as many employees to travel in F/C as before. A lot of days now, the great majority of my customers in F/C are there on AAdvantage mile upgrades on miles they earned in the past. I don't have a problem with frequent flyers upgrading. The reason they have those points is because they have been loyal to us over time; however, the first 16 seats on the plane used to pay for the rest of the plane to go from DFW-LGA (or wherever). That's not true often enough these days.
