in the old days:
- business class, very good service, high price, all flexible tickets
- economy class, good service, reasonable prices, no flexible ticket at all (saturday night rule, no change...)

but companies insisted more and more to have their employees flying economy but wanted to have some flexibility... let's create a product called economy flex and charged almost as much as business!

currently:
- business class, good service, high price (the same as before!), flexible ticket, lots of miles
- economy flex class, average service, still high price, flexible tickets, lots of miles
- economy class, almost NO service (in addition to seating and WC use), a few ridiculously cheap tickets for marketing purposes, the same reasonable prices as before. headache to find out how many miles it earns

but nobody now wants to fly business class for short flight, and nobody is allowed to do so anyway as there is usually a slightly cheaper still flexible alternative in economy class that obey companies' eco-only policies

next future, like Blue1:
- economy flex, average service, still high price etc...
- economy, P-class at its best, mainly E and M tickets available, a few el-cheapo for the marketing department

now companies are happy, only economy class available, none of their dear employees will ever fly on these soooo expensive business class tickets, they will fly economy flex (simply because all P-class availability is zeroed out a week before departure...)

... and a bit later...

- economy flex, special surcharge or price increase due to "security and safety and oil prices" => price becomes like the the good old business class with all flexible tickets available
- economy, no reasonable ticket anymore, just very cheap (a few) or quite expensive tickets available, none of them flexible

it is back to the old system, it just took some time and some "smart" change management and marketing to change the name business class into economy flex, to charge the same $$$ and to save a lot on deteriorated service since it's just "economy" after all and at the same time, they improved the economy class business model in order to allow agressive marketing while now it is impossible to find a decent 200-250 EUR return ticket for a weekend if not booked 4-6 weeks in advance...

partly due to companies' (airlines main source of profit) short term visions and economy-only travel, both business and leisure travellers are the loosers...