I didn't think what happened with Southwest could get so bad but my last flight with them was in 2021. Post-early COVID, it was pretty obvious every airline was

I didn't think what happened with Southwest could get so bad but my last flight with them was in 2021. Post-early COVID, it was pretty obvious every airline was struggling with reduced and/or ill staff. I flew from the East Coast with a 1 hr layover in Las Vegas that turned into multiple hours, at night, with everything outside of the gambling areas closed down. Kids crying for food, all that. Finally, the staff for the flight from Vegas to LA showed up. They had to call them in and specially ask them to take this last flight of ours. I've also sat next to a Southwest pilot on a flight transferring to another city. They haven't had "cheap" fares for a while nor have their staff had the quirky friendliness I had seen on flights when I started flying with them some 15 years ago. The US domestic airline industry a patient that's always on life-support and pretty much upheld by government bailouts and bankruptcies at this point. I've probably mentioned it here before but the first chapter of David Dayen's "Monopolized" covers some of the sources of the issues going on there. It's a bad mix for something that has become important infrastructure, especially since we have no redundancy on the ground with something like rail traffic.