> they took a principled stand to not show their prices in place where it would LOOK worse (without being worse)
I bet they weren't too unhappy about not paying an agent/referral fee to these "price comparison sites" (that are really often travel agents themselves, or are at least getting a commission from those or the airline directly).
For related reasons, Easyjet or Ryanair (I forgot which one) was not available for booking through the regular GDSes for the longest time, which made them unavailable for booking through traditional travel agents not directly integrating with their proprietary inventory system. I bet that was as much about not wanting to pay the incumbents' fees as much as it was about being "modern API forward".
Every commodity service like flights needs to be available through a standard API. We need to maximize the impact of market forces, via price discovery and then competition, for the benefit of passengers.
"principled", in this context, meaning "they have rules that they have abided by", rather than "a set of rules that are morally just or otherwise generally appreciable for their merits".
Not saying SW wasn't benefiting from the arrangement, or that they weren't playing coy for selfish reasons. Just saying that they had rules and stuck to them, rather than acquiescing to consumer forces as OP suggested.
I bet they weren't too unhappy about not paying an agent/referral fee to these "price comparison sites" (that are really often travel agents themselves, or are at least getting a commission from those or the airline directly).
For related reasons, Easyjet or Ryanair (I forgot which one) was not available for booking through the regular GDSes for the longest time, which made them unavailable for booking through traditional travel agents not directly integrating with their proprietary inventory system. I bet that was as much about not wanting to pay the incumbents' fees as much as it was about being "modern API forward".