They won’t start caring until they see massive passenger migrations (and the accompanying $$$ losses) to UAL, DL and the others. Apparently that is not happening... yet. “Minimum Viable Product” means that they have a graph that basically plots the question “how cheap can we make the product while still ensuring they keep coming back?” And no they don’t give a hoot about the bad publicity...as long as they keep coming back.

By contrast, DL, UAL these days tend to be more along the lines of “how much $$$ can we invest into the product while still remaining profitable”...hence they have realized that investing in their product actually creates substantial profits along with customer loyalty.

That is 180 degrees from Doug’s M.O. It runs against his basic management style of doing everything as cheap as possible.

That said, Airlines are cyclical. Remember when UAL was the bottom of the barrel five years ago.. look at them today. We’ll get back to being a premium airline some day... but it’s gonna take a pretty big management change.