Airlines are extremely low-profit commodity businesses. Most US carriers have low single-digit margins, and AC is high single digits. If unbundling allows them to lower the sticker price -- or avoid raising it because of e.g. inflation -- in what world is that "gouging?"

There's a subcategory of "every price change I don't like is gouging" but in reality, gouging is generally defined as raising prices to an unfair or unreasonable level in response to a shortage during a crisis.