Most of the people, most of the time, aren't flying in a premium cabin, even for business, and there are only a few true premium transcon routes in the USA.

However, many of the people, much of the time, especially for business, need frequency and flexibility. One flight a day, or flights that don't work for the schedule (as I noticed in June when the earliest SFO/JFK wouldn't get me in until nearly 6pm, killing an entire evening, so I took another carrier) are not going to cut it for the SFO crowd. When AS started the limited frequency transcon SEA flights many years ago, the palpable excitement of "a nonstop to XXX" could be heard a thousand miles away. When VX started a better sort of product, "we" were willing to deal with perhaps less frequency to avoid the billion pound SFO monster. And we also had AS, with a vibrant domestic partner scheme. We now have none of that, and the general sense of calm I felt at the time of the VX purchase announcement has turned into a fear of a self-fulfilling prophecy of "we don't fly there, we don't have a partner that flies there where you can earn miles" so we have to go elsewhere. Does anyone really think the business traveler returns to AS when a route is seasonally suspended? I'd expect, as a rule, generally not. The planes will fill up with whatever airline has the lowest fare, for those fare shopping. Around here, many just go to WN and don't even shop around. And for those that say "UA only flies 1x/day from SFO/YYY," they can also get you there via DEN/ORD/IAH, etc., the same day with probably a dozen options. AS may be able to get you there, via SEA, 1x a day, out of the way, sometimes, and sometimes requiring an overnight.

Rant temporarily over. I'm not even qualified for MVP for 2020. Based upon my travel so far this year, I'd be Gold already, considering (former) partner travel.