1. Experienced pilots on all legs, rather than eg Corporate Liability Shield #73 dba United Express.
2. No change fees. Sure, fellating surveillance programs on other airlines can probably get you this too, but why bother?
3. As you've referenced, two free bags. Most of the time "unbundling" means paying the same fare plus the fees.
4. Hot chocolate (yes, this really deserves its own bullet point).
If any airline actually stopped enabling the blue shirted molesters, I would switch in a heartbeat. Until then, they're really all just cattle cars.
Air travel was a premium market product for many Americans well within living memory. The old regulated-pricing model helped to reinforce this: airlines used to sometimes advertise "we're the same cost as the other guys, but our food is better/planes are faster/experience is superior." So people traditionally expect a certain degree of basic services and features.
The market pivoted quite quickly towards "we're promoting the lowest price we legally can by means of unbundling features", and obviously, they're not going to trumpet the second half of that premise.
Either cnnsumers aren't quite ready to adjust their expectations that far downward, or the product is now so hollowed out that even the new lower price feels too high for what it is.
Not necessarily. More checked bags -> fewer carry-ons -> faster boarding as people aren't trying to cram their bags into the overhead and giving up and gate-checking -> shorter turnaround time -> higher aircraft utilization, cheaper airport fees -> cheaper tickets
Checking and loading baggage takes way longer, not to mention the unloading and waiting at the other end.
Not that any of the other major carriers is much better. But I don’t love the lining up and then hoping for a good seat, they’re often not the cheapest, and letting everyone check two bags for “free” is a cost drag on everyone. Unbundling is better. So is having different classes of service so that people who want to subsidize the entire cost of the flight for a lie flat seat can do so.
I’ve also had multiple shitty customer service experiences with them, including one where they wouldn’t let me board an earlier half-full flight instead of the one I was ticketed on without trying to charge me 2x the cost of my ticket as an upgrade fee. Now, I obviously wasn’t entitled to anything beyond what I paid for, but I’ve been treated much better by many airlines and they were just rude about it. They owed me nothing, and they weren’t about to let me forget it.
I still fly them every now and then but it’s a pretty mediocre brand that people are irrationally excited about.