Looking back at the posts by
UA Insider, it seems the core issue was the "user confusion":
Noted as the primary reason in the OP:
But, it wasn’t without issues. Specifically, for many customers who are not as familiar with the ins and outs of fare structures, there was often room for this information to be misinterpreted.
Again in her follow up post:
But, at the end of the day, the way in which the information was shared was truly causing issues and confusion for an extremely broad audience. This is what drove the change.
If the core issue was 3rd parties having the data, the threat of legal action would have taken care of that and we wouldn't have known the difference.
I think if there is an "excuse" here it is that UA is using the user confusion argument to cover for the fact that they just don't want their own customers to see the data at all, irrespective of
where they see it.