Hasn't the price of Domestic F been coming down? I assume that is one of the reasons my CPU clearance rate has dropped by half of what it use to be (closer to my pre-1K days).
Maybe they are compensating for the decrease in price by taking away space.

What seems clear is that whoever design's airline seats and selects the designs for the airline are not frequent fliers (at least not on the types of seats they design, maybe they are use to private jets)