I don't want people to go out of their way to hurt the companies, purposefully buying tickets they don't want and then refunding them or something. I'm just saying that on the occasion that a mistake happens, you shouldn't feel bad about using whatever legal/procedural recourse available so that you don't have to just eat the cost.
I would go for alternative airlines if there were any. Alas.
I've plainly stated that I don't think they are bad to the point you should go out of your way just to attack them.
I also didn't say they are evil, destroying the world or anything like that. If that's what I thought, then yeah, stopping doing business with them altogether might be the best course of action.
But I simply said that you shouldn't feel bad about making use of recourses made available to you by either the law or the company itself. Which I don't think it's at all incongruent with continuing to use these companies' services.
some time ago I was thinking that "well, these dark patterns are there, but I am buying from Ryanair so what I expected"
and then I was buying from more upscale company and it had literally the same dark patterns trying to mislead and upsell you
some specific routes may have de facto monopoly but many, many are not
If this was the intended point, it could be made in dozens of different ways from increasing baggage fees to decreasing legroom to the death of inflight meals. The specific example was obviously chosen because they can both be connected under the nebulous label of “AI” to make it seem more unfair.
They are using algorithms to extract the highest price from you.
You can use algorithms to extract the lowest price from them.
Capitalism is based on the premise that everyone will be as greedy as possible