Not having the trip profiles (or budget) to ever touch a First-Class seat anyway, I find that, if I *must* fly commercial, Southwest is by far the best choice. This (I suspect) is why it is so overwhelmingly supported by business travelers which make up Southwest's "bread and butter."
They are by no means always the cheapest, but the fares are always rational and never ridiculous, and if your travel plans change you never, ever forfeit the fare paid.
They tell the truth. They have excellent frequencies on city pairs they service , and when WX does disrupt their operations, they recover better than any other carrier, because they are never overwhelmed by one hub.
Always fiscally sound, they pay their people better than any other carrier, they actively solicit input from all strata of the airline's personnel, and they listen to the input that they get. They believe that well-maintained aircraft are more reliable, and reliability and safety are inevitable traveling companions.
For domestic travel, I find Southwest to be a superior product to any other airline's (since Legend failed), and it is a sustainable excellence.
In the current circumstance, if you believe that all that happened was that someone decided to jack around with a marginally-dressed passenger, you are jumping to a conclusion unsupported by actual evidence. Sometimes, you're damned if you do, and damned if you do not, but you can feel reasonably confident that the issue arose as a result of complaints from other passengers... which cannot reasonably be ignored.