There is no way that behavioral psychologists aren't on staff at all of the major US airlines. Everything in the airlines is a massive study in consumer and employee psychology - from cockpit resource management between captains and first officers to how people board an airplane, to how they queue up in the terminals.
You know damn well what happened - it was well known what was going to happen but the bean counters drowned it out and won out by enshittifying the process and "generating revenue"