The airlines are incentivised to make it complicated, and just dealing with n different website layouts is challenging enough. Compare to e.g. food labelling, where we require mass in specific units and nutritional information in a specific format, or cars, which are obliged to include mpg and safety information from particular standardised tests in their advertising.

> And there's nothing to say that the standard bundle will necessarily meet that many people's preferences.

It doesn't have to - the point is just to have a point of comparison to be able to compare equivalent offerings from Airline A and Airline B, even if you end up getting a very different bundle from the standard one.