About once per year they offer a deal whereby if you sign up for the Southwest Airlines credit card, they give you 50,000 points. That's about $800 worth of flying and it only costs $69 (per year) for the card. So you sign up for the credit card and drop it a few months later (you keep the points). Both my wife and I did this last year so we both have a truckload of free flying available.

maybe just lucky and I haven't flown all that frequently since 2000, but it always seems to go smoother w/them even without assigned seats etc

At least that's been my experience. A friend of mine is a Southwest captain and even though he's not the only professional pilot I know, I consider him the most competent. Sometimes he expresses frustration with their management, but relatively speaking I think they are better than most.

I have my own plane, so I don't fly much commercial. This year may be an exception because it doesn't look as if I'll have as much time to get away compared to years past. The best I'll probably be able to do is one or two 3 day weekend getaways, so I'll probably use my Southwest points for that.

still got some very good fares to certain big cities.

Let me ask you a question because last month when we flew SW, we met a guy in line who was having a conniption fit with us over position in line.

I have flown SW quite a bit, and I always thought that you were supposed to get in line based on your number. So, think we were like B30 and B31. Went to the section marked B30-B35 and there was one guy there. We got in front of him because we had the first two numbers. He had a hissy fit. He said that he was first because he was standing in the section first. I told him our numbers and he said it didn't matter what order you were in within a section.

I know this sounds petty...but your position could be the difference between having to split up on the flight or not...and we just stayed where we were since it was a 4 hour flight. But had to laugh because just as they called us to board, he literally broke out of line and ran in front of us to the check in person. My husband told the check in guy "What an asshole." and amazingly he said, "I know he is a royal asshole" guess he must have flown a lot.

I think the last time we flew they had numbers and we found our spot. Nobody was throwing fits or anything though - sorry you got stuck w/that guy!