Did Southwest just throw us under the plane? Sneaky fine-print changes explained

Short summary: SWA believes it's not obligated to comp you meals and a hotel if a flight is cancelled because the airport itself screws up.<p>Meh. Have you ever had a flight cancelled because of lack of gate availability? I haven't.<p>I get better customer service from SWA than from any other airline. This article is preoccupied with the notion that Delta or United is going to use SWA's change as cover for even worse changes to their contract. Uh, ok? Delta and United also don't offer almost completely transparent pricing, either. I trust SWA enough not to freak out about changes like this, and even without fine-print changes, I don't trust Delta <i>in the least</i>.

I'm really loving these blog posts from Flightcaster about the internal mechanics of the airline industry. Engineering pr0n at its best.<p>The work of getting paying passengers to the boarding gate makes our modern flying machines look simple in comparison. That's saying something!

Southwest is still head and shoulders above everyone else, although I had one flight a few years ago were the crew was so rude to the passengers that I thought I'd accidentally boarded a U.S. Airways flight. Thankfully that's been an infrequency rather than a regularity like it is with other airways.

Maybe I attribute too much cleverness to Southwest's motives but taking the post's points 1 and 2, could it be possible that Southwest is doing this to gain a further competitive advantage in the marketplace? As in, if it's true that this will eventually be replicated by other airlines and it's also true that this will seep into policy, if SWA can keep it out of their policy, their customer service will look at least slightly better than their competitors over time.<p>Normally, I'd think this was a huge stretch but SWA has always been well run and managed. They have excellent customer friendly policies and they market them well. It doesn't seem that crazy to think that the smart people at SWA are taking a small PR gamble now in hopes of a big customer service win later.

Talk about a tempest in a teapot.