I agree with all of the above, but...
AC has a business model that is somewhat difficult to support. They have been adding a number of staff to develop the program (as well as Inlight) but haven't raised fees for a while.
I do know that a significant amount of support is related to interfaces (it could be argued if they were better made there would be less support but...)
For what they add, paying $150 for the interfaces is not a significant amount of money.
At any rate, what is the alternative?