It is a legitimate hypothesis.

There are many flights where demand is low but fares are astronomical. Gouging these routes is one of the key revenue maximization strategies of the Continental regime, and as such is now a guiding strategy at UA.

Even with low demand, there are a handful of people willing to pay a high price. Normally, the put a small aircraft on such routes to gouge those few price insensitive passengers and collect the revenue.

As noted upthread, UA is forced to fly a larger jet than is otherwise supported by demand on this route, so is there isn't enough demand to fill the aircraft at normal fares, they have to gouge a smaller number of price insensitive flyers to get the money needed to pay for the flight rather than charge a fair price to more flyers, because there aren't enough to such flyers available.

Furthermore, perhaps more important, there is no competition on this flight, and a core tenet of the {airline's} playbook is to gouge all routes where there isn't direct compensation. I saw this strategy rolled out on all direct flights out of SFO with no competition after 2012. Route by route, costs were raised dramatically on all such flights.

GUM is stuck - they are the perfect victim for all different types of abuse, unfortunately.