What "gives" is your use of the words "recently" and "lately". To answer your question and understand it, you should understand a few things.

Their core customer base has been flying them longer than a decade. For ex, I started flying SWA out of DAL as a boy when one stood a very good chance of running into Herb Kelleher on a flight serving drinks and peanuts.

Decades later, 9/11 came along and SWA, alone among airlines, didn't lay off a single pilot, bag handler, or gate agent. The exec. suite even made a scheduled $179 million payment into a co. retirement plan during those uncertain times. In addition to all that, it has never sniffed bankruptcy and made a profit in every year of it's existence. Out of literally thousands of trips on SWA with innumerable connecting flights, they've never lost one of my checked bags and I usually arrive at my destination on time.

If I had to chose one word to describe SWA, in an industry fraught with risk, that word would be "reliable".

One can "rave" about SWA in any number of different ways. It has historically been a reliable company that gives the greatest value for your traveling dollar. It has been a reliable and safe investment for your stock portfolio. It's safety record is impeccable. It flies Boeing aircraft. I can go on and on.

Disclosure: never worked there, been a customer since the '70s, and I own the stock. Yes, I drank the kool-aid a long time ago, but the company and it's performance justified it and continues to do so.