I've came up with a airline ranking system after years of development, mainly flying economy for pleasure. (I'm a poor and do not often fly for business). My system is this: compare airlines to their equivalent large chain store eg. Spirit is Dollar General, Frontier is Family Dollar, United is Walmart (everyone uses it, everyone whines about it, but it has the flights you need), American is Sam's club (like United but wants to be more exclusive) Delta is Safeway, etc etc. Feel free to correct me. I used to think Southwest was like Publix, but have considered de-ranking them towards Hy-Vee or similar.