Originally Posted by cparekh

Yes. it absolutely is, and it's not just AA. It's a pricing scheme called second-degree price discrimination. You know it as a senior citizen discount or a student discount. On AA, you know it as a lower price if you are willing to book two-weeks in advance or stay Saturday night. The point is that AA (or any business) will work very hard to extract as much money as possible from those willing to pay it. As AA sees it, I (net savvy) am not willing to pay, while your aunt is (or she could find some way not to). Technology has not raised the price for your aunt, it has simply lowered overall cost to all passengers by finding a way to differentiate between two levels of willingness to pay.

I guarantee you that as soon as most (or even many) people refuse to book AA because of the fee, that fee would go away because it would be an ineffective way to extract additional revenue from those willing to pay it.