The title is a polite way of putting it. In reality, what they are backing is a startup which claims that the data they gather will allow airlines to gobble all consumer surplus by being able to offer compensation equal to the reservation price of the customer: I.e., the compensation that leaves the passenger indifferent between flying on this flight vs giving up their seat.
I am going to claim that the airlines backing this and the investors of the startup have not studied Ultimatum Games[1]:
One of the most debated results in experimental
economics comes from studies of the so-called
“ultimatum” game. In this game, one player (the
“proposer”) goes first and offers a split of a pie
of given size. The second player chooses whether to
accept or reject. If the second player rejects, both
get noting. If he accepts, they split the pie as was
proposed. The ultimatum game has a unique subgame
perfect equilibrium where the proposer gets
(essentially) the whole pie. It also has many other
Nash equilibria, where the proposer offers a more
generous split, fearing an aggressive offer will be
rejected.
The experimental results are in stark contrast to
the backward induction solution.
I am going to claim that the airlines backing this and the investors of the startup have not studied Ultimatum Games[1]:
[1]: https://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Econ%20286/Experimental.pd...