I can't begin to explain why, but almost every American airline has been a worse experience for me than almost every non-American airline. I fly regularly on Tu

I can't begin to explain why, but almost every American airline has been a worse experience for me than almost every non-American airline. I fly regularly on Turkish, for example, and their service is amazing! If ever I have to fly international, they are my first preference, but even Lufthansa, Swiss, AirBerlin, KLM, have all been a nicer experience than any of the major American carriers. Of course, this doesn't address the issue of dropping United if most of your flying is domestic. In that case, I'd suggest looking into flying out of smaller airports with one of the discount carriers. SouthWest has actually been reasonably good to me. Sure, it's nowhere near the level of service on Turkish, but for the price it's pretty much in line with what I'd expect.