I agree with your sentiment, and I think it's just one facet of a broader issue with how advertising/marketing is rampant. For example, you can pay to see a movie in a theater, and still get shown ads.
I've heard that airplane fuel is becoming prohibitively expensive and consumer demand for flights is relatively elastic, so this (and all the other ways they behave miserly) are attempts to remain solvent without drastically raising prices. I feel somewhat sympathetic to that argument (if it's actually true), but it seems like that should be a signal for technology to step in and innovate around the problem rather than attempting to blunder through with more advertisements.
Why not verify what you've heard? Kerosene prices have actually fallen dramatically from just a few years ago.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E...