Plaidophile

Unfortunately, the only major airline that is not on my shitlist at this point is Southwest.

airlines are so poorly-run. it's no god damn wonder why they're losing so much money every year.

It's times like this that I'm glad that I don't fly.. Ever.

I made it home fine, though. I got pretty lucky in that I got a window seat in an exit row next to someone who travels a lot so he appreciated the need to let other people have elbow space too.

i've had good experiences with airtran lately...
just this last weekend, in fact, and another one a couple weeks ago.
they have xm satellite radio on every seat, which is pretty cool.
-bill

My vote goes to Alitalia. They're very bare-bones and usually have mediocre seats (in MD-80s, not the best for comfort anyway), but they don't overbook, are courteous and helpful, and don't bog me down in ten thousand tons of pointless runaround. Unlike, oh, say, US Air, which has to be the WORST for this kind of thing. Behind AMC, that is (government air run like an airline, instead of a military air squadron. Flying on military aircraft that are run like military aircraft is actually pretty OKish.)

I've never even heard of Alitalia before.

As the name implies, they're an Italian airline (the main one, in fact). They do have flights in the US, but mostly just to Europe.