Originally Posted by
motytrah
There's always room for debate on if decisions are good for the short term shareholder or the long term share holder.
Precisely. Maximising revenue 1 year (e.g. if upgrades for elites were to go down significantly due to given preference to aggressively selling paid upgrades) might indeed show a short term revenue uptick and is very easy to gauge. Having disenfranchised elites move their business, or just book lowest carrier and skip over paying a higher fare to stay loyal DL - the financial impact there is harder to gauge.