I know I am going to enjoy this thread.. but sorry , I have some ideas myself.. but my wife is calling me..
she needs her diet mountain dew.. back soon..

Congratulations consumer champion! Your hypothetical country now has zero operating airlines and every single future traveller just lost the value of their ticket.

Have you taken a look at the financials of most of the world's airlines over a long run? Margins are tight and many have had to be bailed out or are kept alive by subsidies. I'm not a fan of nationalisation, but perhaps the thing to do is to view air travel as public transit and accept that the taxpayer has a role in maintaining an airline. These measures you are proposing are simply not feasible for a public listed commercial business.

Not a chance, considering they just overhauled the entire thing to a revenue-based system. It is comical that people still think that it is possible.

By what mechanism do you propose to "demand" better accommodation by the airlines? Threaten to stop flying? We've already done that.

Market forces are a better lever than any puffed-up customer revolt. (Boycotts, etc. by aggrieved airline clientele are notorious for looking small and stupid, as most of the customer base just wants to fly at the lowest price, whether the limes on the bar cart are cut the way FlyerTalk likes or not.)

In a prosperous era the airlines make bank and exploit passengers. In a recession or depression the airlines have to campaign for revenue and be nicer to passengers. Simple as that. Remember United Airlines happily throwing its customers into the labor-management crossfire during the famous 2000 SFH (Summer From Hell), then sheepishly pivoting to trying to be nice whilst flirting with BK and possibly extinction after 9/11? We'll see the same swing of the pendulum here.

Airlines are (A) notoriously efficient destroyers of capital and (B) mostly poorly managed. I would be interested to see a debate over the wisdom of applying public capital as a stabilizing force in return for certain concessions to taxpayers, but the tactical hurdles would be astronomical and I don't think anyone wants Air Amtrak or copies of the USSR-era Aeroflot. At present I am bemused to see hysterical rhetoric from Airlines for America, the US trade lobby, arguing that the government has absolutely no claim to even a temporary stake in the US network carriers, but those carriers have a fundamental right to $50+ billion in government funds. It is of course massive, hilarious hypocrisy, but airline managers have been known for it for a long long time.

No I don't see it happening now. What I "possibly" see is tragically one day is an accident with a completely packed 28-29 seat pitch a/c and not everyone getting out of the a/c alive. Then the blame put on too cramped seating conditions. Maybe then there would be changes.

Every time new regulations are proposed there's always someone there to tell us why it's the doom of industry. They claimed it when the government instituted regulations requiring airfares to be advertised including taxes and fees. They claimed it when the government mandated free cancellations within 24 hours. They claimed it when the government would no longer let airlines hold passengers hostage for 6+ hours during bad weather. It's just not true.

It's an entirely reasonable model. It all depends on the breakpoints for the customer demographic. If 95% of passengers want a drink, might as well include it in the ticket price. If only 5% want one, why should the others subsidize.

Air carriers can mine their own data and figure out what ought to be included in a base ticket price and what ought to be sold a la carte.

We know the U.S. airline industry spent $45 billion buying back their own stock to boost share prices. We know the tax payers are giving $50 billion to the airlines to keep them solvent. The problem isn't profitability, it's priorities.

An article appeared today about this (cbc.ca) making it clear that Transport Canada worked in cahoots with the airlines to change the rules. IMO that will put max. pressure on the Government of Canada to reverse course.

So my answer to the question is yes. If not now, when?

It's a difficult point to put across in this hypercharged climate, but if the airlines had kept $45 billion in cash sitting around in expectation of a long-shot economic apocalypse unlikely to ever occur, they would be fending off criticism of a different kind.

How many times have the US3 (and their predecessors) been bailed out/in Ch11?

Neither the US nor Canada, nor any developed economy are going to let their key air carrier infrastructure go to pot. Period.

Worrying about stock buybacks, FFP's, bag fees and other stuff (as occurs in other threads) simply isn't worth the bandwidth.

Chapter 11 is not so much a bailout as a heat shield. The concern is allowed to continue trading and reorganize and renegotiate terms with banks, vendors, etc. while protected from creditors, e.g. ignoring its bills. AA, DL, US, NW, F9, CO, and UA have all filed Chapter 11 at one time or another, but kept operating as usual. United remained in bankruptcy protection from December 2002 to February 2006, more than three years, a feat regarded by most as a spectacular, flagrant abuse of the law. Chapter 11 is supposed to confer a little breathing room, not become a way of life.

Other US carriers that went bankrupt and ceased operations, e.g. dropped dead, include Braniff, Eastern ATA, the first Frontier, Aloha, the second National, Midway, Skybus, and many more... not including distressed carriers like Pan Am and TWA that were on the verge of shutting down when acquired.

I didn't say they should have sat around on a pile of cash. I said maybe they should have taken one row of seats out of their planes. Or included a carry-on bag with every ticket. Or made their websites more functional. Or done literally anything else with that $45 billion that would make me more sympathetic to their cause. They didn't have to please consumers for the last ten years because they had plenty of demand and, well, that's business. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Why shouldn't we have demands?