Airlines are extremely low-profit commodity businesses. Most US carriers have low single-digit margins, and AC is high single digits. If unbundling allows them to lower the sticker price -- or avoid raising it because of e.g. inflation -- in what world is that "gouging?"

There's a subcategory of "every price change I don't like is gouging" but in reality, gouging is generally defined as raising prices to an unfair or unreasonable level in response to a shortage during a crisis.

You can consider that they might've had to raise the fare by that much to keep up with inflation/rising costs, but instead, they're keeping it constant. Like the sibling comments have already mentioned, it's an extremely competitive, extremely thin margin business, there is no way you can call what they're charging "gouging".

I don't love this change either, but we don't need to be hyperbolic about it.

> If the total ticket price goes up, it's called “gouging”.

Or just rising with inflation. Or the business deciding to raise prices for their own internal reasons.

Do you consider it “gouging” every time a business decides to raise prices? What’s your definition of “gouging”, exactly?