Apples and Oranges
You cannot compare Ryanair and SAS?
Maybe because SAS is for very rich people and/or people employed by government or rich companies, who can pay for the tickets.
Low fare airlines are for common people, who do not have access to large funds, or someone to pay their tickets for them. They just want to go from a to b.
Flexible ticket? Who cares whether the ticket is flexible? You can change your mind 20 times with a low fare ticket before you approach the cost of the SAS ticket.
Mialge points? The company pays the SAS tickets, the employee gets the points to fly for privately. If that was a 3rd world country, it would have been called corruption.
The biggest lowfare downside in my opinion is that when you are flying through, you cannot check your baggage through, and have to wait at the baggage belt, and check in again. For this you often have to allow 2 hours, even though you are just changing from one aircraft to another. Checking in can be tedious, and no automatic checkin machines (wonder why?)
The rest of the low fare I can easyLy live with.