Sorry, another of my long posts but it's a holiday afternoon and I've got time on the sofa...
Others have stated two key points: that younger generations have grown up with the unbundled pricing scheme and see it as normal. Also, that those of us in this forum view the selection of carriers/routes/aircraft differently.
Further, the article is a little simplistic with regards to filters. Starting with the lowest cost is as good a place as any to start and the world has consistently proved that it likes low prices! The writer is, himself, fairly young (38) and understands that the Net does simplicity very well.
I think that he has not researched just how much the airline business has changed in the last 40 years. There has been constant change from the airline structure and govt control (that he may not know about) to the dog-eat-dog of today. The benefits to Pax have been manifold and can be listed by anyone of us in here. As a technology writer, he has overlooked the remarkable improvements in technology (as others have said) of fuel economy, navigation, etc all reflecting in the seat-per-mile price. He seems to think 'technology' is just about what is in the hand of the customer.
He sees UA failing to give immediate abject apology as a further failure of price-rush-to-the-lowest. But it isn't. In all my life one of the consistent things is that corporate entities start off by rejecting all criticism and blame. They might be a department store, or an on-line store, they could be a political party and a President/Prime Minister or a multi-billion corporate like Pepsi/UA/IBM but they ALL reject the first accusation for reasons that are, I suggest, self evident. They have done so from long before the current litigious world.
In fact, they do what any 5 year old child does: "It wasn't me, Dad!" So, I think the writer has not read his history of the airline world, nor the way that corporates function.
The level of technology that I, as a pax, have at my disposal is enormous and I'll only quote one example. On more than one occasion, whilst waiting in departure for a flight that was delayed I have been able to look up details of the inbound flight and trace the location of that aircraft. I have read the details on the departure board of the originating airport and seen where in the sky the machine is!! So I was able to make my own decisions about what to do next - irrespective of what the airport was telling me. Increasingly, you can do this with trains and busses etc.
Lastly, he says:
Yet the airline industry has not just stubbornly resisted innovation to improve customer service — in many ways, technology has only fueled the industry’s race to the bottom.
He conflates the failure of the airlines to change with technology 'failure', On the one hand the airlines are just like any other modern corporate - they place their shareholders first and customers second. Since the writer works in NYC he should understand this.
Secondly, technology has given customers the choice of high cost and lovely service - and they have consistently chosen the reverse. The fact that ALL corporates have steadily reduced their customer service over the last 20 years stands as witness. Some carriers made a feature of it and STILL made Millions.
The failure in UA last week was not technology but the failure of human beings to carry out a process that is used thousands of times every day across the world.
So I think he is wrong on all levels but is a technology writer who wanted/needed to come up with a column that would be up to the minute.