[joe_the_user]

Part of the reason that people go for the cheapest price is that all of the other variables in flight aren't really verifiable.

Among a wide variety of industries, a large portion of revenues come from "upsales", pushing some impulse buys extra like insurance. Which is to say that the impulse buy extras are shitty ripoffs and consumers over time have grown to expect promises to be worthless and to only pay for things they can clearly verify.

And that relates to selling cellphone with longer battery life - all the companies make unrealistic claims, how could someone feel safe giving up something that can see (like a feature or a smaller size) for something they can't see?

[ajmurmann]

Discoverability of things like leg room is also practically zero when booking. Even if it was easier to see it, there are usually very few options anyways and they often differ hugely on other criteria like number of stops, departure time and price. I might be happy to pay fifty fiat extra for a free inch more leg room even more on a longer flight. Am I willing to have an extra stop for that out get out of bed at 4am instead of 6am or leave awkwardly in the middle of the day to arrive in the evening my vacation spot and effectively lose half a day at my vacation spot? No

I think the airline market hardly ever offers real choices and many things that look like choices end up actually being the same flight sold by different carriers from the same alliance. Alliances are a huge pet peeve of mine anyways. There are certain (US based) airlines I strongly dislike and would like to avoid. However, it's almost impossible. Even if I book another carrier the flight often times end up being operated by them again. Sometimes it gets changed after I book. This is a dysfunctional market. I want Delta and United out of business and I've had the same from others. Yet we are all stuck flying them because we can't avoid it.