A lot of that user-hostile design in public space seems aimed at discouraging people from loitering/camping out, especially those who didn't pay an entry fee or buy something. But everybody at an airport bought something to get in, and everyone has a specified departure time, so I think there's less incentive to make people uncomfortable.
"How To with John Wilson" has a bit about user-hostile design in public architecture that changed how I see New York, especially if you consider that some of the city's 'users' are pigeons.
The flawed negotiation is that you "push it to opex", which, as we know, especially in the US, means it is unlikely to happen. So what originally might have been designed is scaled back. But yes, as with this example, there are cases where only minor tuning is needed once something is in place that is hard to simulate before hand (e.g. the audibility of PA announcements).