I'm not so sure these folks have much emotional stock in the legacies. It seems to me they are unhappy the their favorite legacy, and they fear that low-end competitors like Skybus will make things even worse.

Like you said, though, Virgin America (also JetBlue) shows that the industry is moving away from coach as a commodity. For the first time ever, really, we're seeing substantially different coach products for domestic flights. (Perhaps Midwest was/is genuinely different, but their service was pretty limited nationally.) This is great for consumers, who can pay more or less for their in-flight experience.

The criticism of Skybus's business model is particularly surprising to me. The legacies are barely making money in a very favorable market right now. When we hit a slowdown, they'll be bleeding the red ink as before.