[PaulHoule]

Packing in more people definitely improves the economics of the plane and gets the ticket price down and makes it available to more people. In the US we stopped giving out free meals on flights about 10 years ago, at best you can buy a $20 yucky cardboard lunch box, so the problem of the front pullout never comes up.

I think the most luxurious experience in US domestic travel I had was circa 2013 on a 767 widebody from NYC to LA but there were times circa 1990 when it was common to get on a 737 from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh to Albuquerque that was 1/3 full which feels spacious but that couldn't have been economic.

The industry here is competitive on price but not competitive on quality. New entrants in the industry have focused on price, but I can certainly imagine a start-up airline that builds a fleet of entirely A220 or E2-Jets around a hub in, say, Texas, could serve almost all of North America and advertise a futurist plane you'll like much better.