We fly Southwest as much as we can. We were going to San Diego the weekend following grounding the MAX. Our return flight was canceled, but they worked with us to get on whatever return flight we wanted at no difference in cost. I felt they handled it very well. We ended up having to cancel all of those flights due to my brother's unexpected passing, and when I called to cancel, they refunded everything, no questions asked. I had a separate flight booked on American for my Mom, and when I canceled that, they told me they could refund me as soon as I could produce a death certificate. I understand that policy, but after talking with SW and the lady just saying, "Don't you worry, we'll take care of this right now," it was a rude change. I don't blame the agent at all - she was kind, and I know people try to scam the system all the time, so they have the policy for a reason. But I SO appreciated SW's service and not having something else hanging over my head to go back and take care of.
As far as moving forward, I feel like SW has probably got a decent handle on the schedule changes by now. I flew SW this past week and it was service as usual - on-time departures, early arrivals, friendly staff, and an overall great experience. We plan to continue flying SW, and have flights booked for my brother's wedding and our Disney trip in September.
That being said, we recently had to fly Delta for two trips within a week and a half in order to travel for my brother's funeral. It was not terrible, but we did not experience the excellent customer service we are accustomed to with SW. Because I didn't want to pay $75+ extra for each of my family members to select our own seats, they put us all over the airplane. My 7 year-old daughter was seated between strangers, nowhere near DH or me, on any of our 4 flights. When I called to see if it could be changed, I was told "It's a short flight... surely she'll be fine" and "You can just ask someone else to trade seats." Same with my 11 year-old, though I wasn't quite as concerned about him sitting alone. Still... sorry, but no. When you assign seats to families, you are fully aware of what that entails. When we arrived at the gates for our flights, the gate agents were able to at least put one child with each adult, but it was like an act of Congress. My first trip, I took a larger suitcase and paid to check it. Our second trip, we all packed in carry-ons because we didn't want to pay the baggage fees. They still ended up gate-checking everything to our final destination at no cost. I felt like I was ripped off because they did for free what I'd just paid $30 each way for my previous trip. Even my kids noticed a difference, though we tried really hard not to talk bad about the airline in front of them. Getting back on SW this past week was a welcome relief - for all of us.