Depends upon what airlines fly to what destinations are available. Atlantic City Airport for example only has n-frills Spirit as a carrier. Terrible schedules, cramped seating, very limited destination cities, no free beverages or snacks. But on a short 2 hour flight to Florida for example one puts up with inconveniences.

We usually fly out of Newark. One time we accepted a Newark bump to Las Vegas in exchange for travel vouchers, but the catch was that American Airlines put us in a taxi to go to LaGuardia on another airline for the flight connection ... which we missed due to heavy automobile traffic.

Frequent flyer mileage is another consideration as to which carrier to use. While flight conditions are not ideal on any carrier, one has to use good common sense and not bite off one's nose because of an incident such as the one currently in the news. We have been on AA flights where the airline representative came on board to address the already seated passengers and upped the ante to volunteers to give up their seats for much higher value vouchers than had been announced in the pre-boarding area. They usually get ample numbers of volunteers when the ante is higher.