Trash, sad and pathetic?!?
Folks who work for the government or a monopoly might not be familiar with benchmarking or competitor analysis. But most respectable companies in competitive industries have departments dedicated to such research. It is actually a healthy and desired behavior, compared to high profile executives lobbying their regulators to stifle competition.
Directives like "improve your service" are not specific enough. Before an airline decides to add a feature or enhance it away, it needs to collect some numbers to justify the decision.