Originally Posted by jsloan

Your analysis is as overly simplistic as the one you're rebutting, though.

The fact of the matter is that an airline needs both types of passengers: paid business class passengers are highly profitable, but there aren't enough of them to sustain the flight. Economy passengers are not profitable individually, but collectively they can make an unprofitable flight profitable.

IMO, the best way to look at the recent changes is that UA believes that there is a readily-available stream of passengers who will fill the economy seats, so that if one customer leaves, he'll be replaced by another. I have no idea if it's true, but I believe it's the best interpretation of their changes.