They are well known for being the cheapest domestic airline, and the only one to turn a profit every year for the last 30+ years, and thus have never gone bankr

They are well known for being the cheapest domestic airline, and the only one to turn a profit every year for the last 30+ years, and thus have never gone bankrupt or been bought out like every single other American airline. They only buy a single type of plane and fly it back and forth between the same city pairs. Thus their main competition used to be bus service. Often they would advertise one-way fares for $39 or even $19 as a promotion. Today you can still fly for under $100 between many cities (I live in Texas where they were founded so maybe my experience is different from yours). As for hiding fares from aggregators, it turns out that there is a global booking system served by only a few companies, the largest I think is called Sabre, and in order to list on that system you need to pay a big annual fee. So in another example of cost cutting, Southwest refused to pay the fee and just sells tickets directly to customers, cutting out travel agents. They were the first to have unassigned seats, the first to eliminate meals from flights, and they even used to have provocatively dressed stewardesses before that became uncool. Today the flight attendants sing songs over the intercom. They even used to shave off a few minutes of turnaround time by having everyone out on the tarmac for boarding when the plan pulled up. It was a big game of musical chairs and apparently people found this fun.