I am not sure there is an end in sight. All the "air" has to come out of the system... and that is not going to be easy, because a lot of people's lives are held up by air.
Take housing. A pile of wood, nails, wiring and concrete + a "fair profit" for a builder might amount to $90,000, and yet the finished house (even considering land) in Seattle might be $750K, of which $600K is "air."
In your airline example, Scandinavian Airlines actually used to have something like that, flying from Copenhagen. They were called "green departures;" but you had to show up at the gate at departure time with NO guarantee you'd be on a flight... a sort of ultra standby. But if they had ten seats at the end, they'd let ten people from the waiting area get on a $300 flight for $75 or something like that.
Rent seeking behavior once again :D
That's really interesting! I think cruises will do something similar for last-minute cruise deals, probably because their marginal costs per passenger.