while you have less legacies now due to consolidarion and airlines going out of business, you’re ignoring the pressure that (U)LCCs have. I’m 1988, there were virtually no low cost carriers, and WN, which did exist, was a fraction of the size, so while they had some markets they served, it wasn’t nearly as many as they have today. Now, all of those legacies from ‘88 which no longer exist have been replaced with LCCs, Frontier, Allegiant, Sun County, etc. make no mistake that without them, fares would surely be higher today.

While I would rarely fly one of those carriers - I don’t want the everything costs extra model, which I believe, in the end, often costs more - I have no doubt that the fact those carriers are competing also lowers fares on UA and other legacies. Take CVG for example, which until a few years ago, had a dominant carrier (DL) and no LCCs Flying, and was pretty much always in the top 5 most expensive airports to fly to. The DL dominance started to go away, and fares remained pretty high. Then there was a domino effect when ULCCs started coming - now Frontier and Allegiant fly multiple daily flights to multiple destinations, and WN finally arrived back last June. As the growth continues - airfares have continued to drop - with CVg now being able to promote itself as the lowest price airport to fly out of in the region, and still is growing consoderably. And as prices dropped, the airport started to grow significantly - Cincinnati-based pax that used to drive to DAY, CMH, etc. because it was cheaper there now are flying out of CVG again because he pendulum has swung.