I agree with PineyBob. Yes, the carriers should be providing benefits for the frequent traveler regardless of fare class precisely for the reasons he cites. For the frequent traveler, each airline ticket purchase decision is NOT mutually exclusive. If I only traveled a few times a year, I might be only be concerned about one thing...price. I would select the lowest price regardless of FF benefits. But as frequent travelers we are concerned with more than that and the FF program benefits are a big factor in our purchasing decision. Cut those and you now give me one less reason to fly your airline, for both my full-fare as well as my discount fare travel. Thus, FF programs and the perks they provide give me incentive to book ALL my travel (full and discount fare) with a single airline.

I don't control what the airlines charge for tickets. If the airlines don't like that I'm paying cheapo fares for my travel or they aren't making money on those fares, why are they offering them? Clearly, the airlines are trying to move to a system where they will provide benefits/perks if I buy a high cost ticket, and no benefits/perks if I buy a cheapo fare, i.e., the mutually exclusive purchase decision model. That model might work fine if I'm buying a new big-screen TV every 8-10 years, but airline travel purchased weekly or monthly is not that way for FFs. I, and I imagine most other FFs, view value in travel across a spectrum of transactions. We will evaluate each transaction in the larger scheme of things (FF benefits such as elite status, upgrades, and overall mileage accumulation) and decide where to drop our dollar based on that, not necessarily based solely on what benefits/perks we can drive out of tomorrow's purchase. And isn't that what FF programs were created for anyway? Seems simple enough to me.