It looks like they might finally get some competition on UK international routes in a few years. Perhaps they will become a bit more customer-focused then.
A whole lot of government agencies and adjacent evil corporations behave exactly like that.
See: FTC rulings on mergers for this taken to the point of absurdity. Contrary to what one might think, especially if you're in a tech bubble, the FTC regularly cancels mergers and works to void potentially anti-competitive behaviors. But when it comes to big tech, which has become completely intertwined with the government, they are treated in a rather different way.
Is it "forgotten" or is it a mutually beneficial relationship?
Eurostar, EZpass, etc, etc. they take the hate for extractive behavior on the government's behalf the way ticketmaster takes the hate for the artists.
Maybe totally imagined but they irk me quite unlike any other.
Just thinking about it now makes me uneasy.
It doesn't matter if there's competition at the customer acquisition stage, as long as there's some form of customer lock-in the corporation is going to abuse them somehow.
And companies without some kind of lock-in never scale in the first place, and that's why we must face this kind of bullshit pretty much everywhere even from companies operating in competitive markets.