At one time owning a non-draft horse placed you in the upper classes of society. The same with riding a train, owning a car, row boat etc. They all migrated to the unwashed masses and became homogenized and compromised. Ditto with air travel.

IMHO the small saving grace for the ff crowd is the existence of the nicer ff programs.....no matter how poor some/all of them are. At least we ff'ers get a crumb or two, now and again. It would take very little for the airlines to eliminate them with little OVERALL loss of revenue.

They allow the individual airlines to nicely add directly to their bottom line if they properly utilize the ff programs to develop loyalty and brand awareness.