I was ticketed on Southwest to return home Monday of this week. I got to the LV airport 2 hours early and found the SW line for baggage check filled the airport lobby, extended out the doors and folded twice on the sidewalk, then fed out into the the street for several hundred feet! I could see immediately that the line would take at least 3 hours to get to the counter so I looked at alternatives on the departure monitor. Both Alaska and Delta had flights to Portland and when I went to their counter, I found no more than 15-20 people in line. I flew Delta home, although the one way ticket cost me as much as the round-trip on Southwest.

The one-bag carry on will make this only worse for Southwest by requiring almost everyone queue up for the ticket counter. Although I am a SW fan, I would recommend not flying that airline out of Las Vegas till things settle down.