Meet the “Happy Traveler”: he’s Terry Buchen, a world-renowned expert on golf agronomy (in other words, Terry is the guy who keeps the greens green; one of his latest projects is the new Tiger Woods golf course in Dubai). Needless to say, Terry gets around: he flies about 200,000 miles a year — and a lot of that’s in First Class. But a good chunk of those miles are flown on Southwest. You heard right. As the New York Times first reported, Terry loves Southwest. Why Southwest? Attitude, personality, peanuts and pilots and more…

Terry (who spoke with a FareCompare writer recently) says, Southwest has a super-loyal customer base, and he’s sure he knows why: the Southwest employees, especially, the employees’ attitudes. “They are the happiest, friendliest, and best trained airline employees,” he says, adding “they are friendly and funny and can and do go outside that box. I love that.”

Okay, but what about Southwest’s lack of frills? The missing mood lighting, the non-existent personal video screens, the lack of electronic games? “Oh, they’ve got games,” said Terry, laughing. He says time passes real quickly when flight attendants lead the passengers in a rousing game of “Who Has the Ugliest Drivers License Photo.”

But it’s more than sheer silliness, he says. It’s seeing a co-pilot pitching in to pass out peanuts (when he’s not needed upfront), or the time he watched a pilot deftly land his plane, then walk out onto the jet-way to personally get a wheelchair for one of his elderly passengers.

“My dream,” says Terry, “is to see how they hire the employees, the whole process.” Clearly, he says, Southwest looks at the person first, and the resume second, if at all. “You can always train someone to do a job”, says Terry, but adds that you can’t really train someone to acquire a fabulous personality.

Not that Terry is in any way belittling the efforts of hardworking crews on other airlines; but he sees how years of layoffs and pay-cuts have understandably affected their attitudes for the worse.

Terry himself is a happy guy (or at least, he sure sounds that way — no doubt visiting the world’s best golf courses helps); and when the Southwest marketing folks discovered Mr. Happy, they promptly put his picture on the airline’s ticket jackets. “My first modeling job,” Terry laughs (hmmm — would he be called a “runway model”?)

As long as we’re on the subject of traveling, what are Terry’s favorite hotels? Well, that’s a story for another time. Terry’s simply too busy with his golf courses and flying, to pose for anymore pictures…at least, for the moment.