Just a couple of points having waded through the entire thread.
1) The London Metro paper showed the pitch complained of to be significantly less than a London Bus or several species of commuter train.. .2)All the figures on revenue seem to assume that all the flights operate at 100% load factors. Those six removed seats are only a loss if you could have filled them.
I could also point out that the unnacceptable pitch is the same whether you pay the full rack rate in peak or go as a bum on seat an midnight 30 in November.
The fact is that the realationship between price, revenue and profit is a complex one. One part of that is a psychological campaign by the holiday companies to persuade the public that change such as this justifies higher prices