You are assuming many things here - for some of us, myself included I rarely have more than 48 hours notice to buy a ticket. In the past 3 weeks I have walked into the airport and bought a ticket from the ticket counter 4 times. Try paying $16,000 for a RT to Madrid, I walked into the airport 64 minutes prior to the last flight out to possibly make a connection.

These "New" policies greatly benefit me and people who travel like me......I will agree that probably the majority of the business travel is tilted the other direction, but to say it is bad for customers is disingenuous. You know when you are #1 on the UG list and then that seat gets magically taken - yup - that was me.

As a second data point - when I qualified EXP, I had to spend 36,312 on AA to get enough EQM to make EXP - that is plain stupid and it is why I gave up on AA and stayed with UA (GS doesn't hurt either )