They are when you pay a pound for your ticket!!!!!
We pay a pound for the ticket because that's what it's offered at and therefore it's worth to both the airline and the pax. It may be £10, it may be £100 but at some point it's worth the airline accepting the payment for that seat (if it wasn't there'd be very few airlines left and the practise would have stopped).
Value paid for ticket has absolutely zero relevance to the service expected on a LoCo - slightly different on scheduled with different cabins/ticket classes.
In summary if I pay £1 for my ticket it doesn't give Airline R any more right to **** on me than if I'd paid £200 for the same flight