Despite what these Retina-lovers say, the MBA is quite possibly still the most popular Mac in Apple's line-up. It's the most affordable, and works like a charm. Apple's laptop sales increased significantly after 2010 when it made its debut (not counting the '08 model) and yes, while the MBPr and MB both sport the Retina screen, not everyone prefers to shell out 1300-1600 bucks on a new laptop. (nor do a lot of people care about a Retina screen)
Case in point would be the 4" iPhone making its return to the Apple line-up this spring (supposedly).. and there would be two reasons for that - size of the screen and affordability due to customer demand. Think of it this way - the last two years, Apple has ceased to even introduce significant changes in the MBA line-up at any of their conferences, they merely just came out and upgraded minor things like the processor and put it on the Apple Store. To me, that clearly indicates the popularity of this machine. Why fix or change something that doesn't need to be? Sure, maybe a port or two here and there, but I'm willing to bet the MacBook Air sticks around longer than you'd expect. People have been harping about this same issue for the last few years, and guess what - its still here.
I really don't get why anyone would want it put to bed, anyways.. if you don't like the MBA, don't buy it. Simple as that. Let us lower maintenance, budget conscious users enjoy it... "while we can".
So your main point here is price, but the past has shown that they can go down quite fast. I'm not an Air hater (I've owned four), but it's just about prediction here.
So in 2008 the Air came out at 1700€. A year later, entry level models where 1400. 2010 gave us it current design at 1300€ and later on 1250€, 1050€, 1000€ and back up to 1050€ in 2016.
The Air used to be overpriced and slow like the MacBook could be viewed now. It got fixed in just two years time...
Maybe the Air has another year left, but at some point Apple can and will move on to next gen devices.
