Interesting post, but what was missed is that corporate travel accounts for a large degree of airline ticket spend - and those values (price and schedule) are that BigCo business cares about.

The post was written from the perspective of the flyer also being the purchaser (either leisure or small business travel) but when tickets are purchased for you, or you have to purchase within a financial policy all that it comes down to is price (and to some extent, schedule).

The CFO doesn't care whether AirlineX has more comfortable seats than ArlineZ and isn't going to authorize purchases because of it.