Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mech1234 2292 days ago
Air travel got way cheaper and more popular over the last two or three decades. Some of this is deregulation and technological innovation enabling lower fuel costs. Much more of this is because customers almost always choose the lowest cost airfare over all other choices. This is a constant pressure to reduce cost and features of the flight and reflects what the average coach customer actually wants. It is nothing to be mad about. Airlines are a low-margin industry, which in my mind trends towards nonexploitative.

If you look at proportions of revenue and costs, the premium seats of an airplane subsidize the cheap seats. And they get to the destination maybe 5 minutes earlier if they disembark first.
2 comments
stevenwoo 2292 days ago
One problem is no one is paying for the externalities of air pollution and noise pollution and fuel resource extraction issues of soil and water pollution until decades later, and in the USA government subsidizes air travel to rural areas and smaller airports. The alternative is maybe we do not need to travel so much and do not have to make it cheaper for people in rural areas to travel by plane.
link
castyr3o9 2292 days ago
That's just a race to the bottom, people will choose the cheaper seat / airline when they see the prices in a list. However, I think it would be different if they saw the leg room difference and amenities. Also, short flight flyers dominate the markets and they care less about being packed into a dirty shoebox with no amenities for two hours to pay $5 less on a ticket.
link
mech1234 2292 days ago
A race to the bottom seems like it is a pretty good thing in this case.

People are reasonably well-informed of the difference between the different levels of seating. To pretend otherwise is to claim ignorance of how many up-sell screens every airline tries to push in front of you during ticket purchase. Seating information is built-in to the ticket purchase process, and there are also third-party websites available just for the purpose of telling you about seating.

"Premium economy" tickets still cost less than the cheapest tickets did in the past.

link
deburo 2292 days ago
>short flight flyers dominate the markets

There are different planes for different lengths, I think.

link