I think "greed and stupidity" is taking it a bit far, but most people are not willing to spend an extra $200 to patronize an airline that doesn't act like this. United's stock went down but most people are not going to fly out of a different airport in order to patronize a different airline.
And before we call air travel expensive let's look at what it actually is. We've only been flying at all for about a century (much less of that time commercially) and it's already safer than driving to the airport. You can get from San Francisco to LA for less than $100 in an hour. Across the country (NYC to LA) for less than $400 in the amount of time it takes you to watch two movies and eat a meal. This is with something approaching $300-350k worth of annual payroll in the cockpit, flying a machine where the engines have to be literally broken down into their component pieces and rebuilt on a regular schedule. The overhead is obscene, the skills required to do the job are expensive, and they'll move you and a friend from one end of the country to the other for less than most people here would spend on a laptop.
The fact that a $20 difference in fare will make you choose one airline over the other is what drives all airlines to this point.
And before we call air travel expensive let's look at what it actually is. We've only been flying at all for about a century (much less of that time commercially) and it's already safer than driving to the airport. You can get from San Francisco to LA for less than $100 in an hour. Across the country (NYC to LA) for less than $400 in the amount of time it takes you to watch two movies and eat a meal. This is with something approaching $300-350k worth of annual payroll in the cockpit, flying a machine where the engines have to be literally broken down into their component pieces and rebuilt on a regular schedule. The overhead is obscene, the skills required to do the job are expensive, and they'll move you and a friend from one end of the country to the other for less than most people here would spend on a laptop.
The fact that a $20 difference in fare will make you choose one airline over the other is what drives all airlines to this point.