[wpietri]

I don't think that's a great counterpoint for a few reasons.

One is that leg room isn't particularly transparent. If I search for flights, the price is much more visible than a leg room measure. Two, people can certainly be fooled; for a long time airlines have been playing a game of gradually ratcheting back amenities without being up front about it. This is the same game that consumer packaged goods companies play with apparent package size. Three, people pay for more leg room all the time. Last I booked a flight, about half the plane was first class, business class, economy plus, or exit rows. Personally, I sometimes pay for it and sometimes don't. When I don't, it's sometimes because I resent how grossly extractive airlines have gotten.

I also think "empirically want", however cute it is as a linguistic trick, is not particularly accurate. Is it what gets him paid? I'd believe it. Is it what they watch? Sometimes, for some people! But pretending that short-term behavior is equivalent to what somebody really wants is choosing to ignore a great deal. It's like saying alcoholics "want" to drink themselves to death.

[arcticbull]

Google Flights shows the leg room in inches, and there's several sites that you can research it on.

However most concretely, back in 2000, American removed a few rows of coach across its entire narrow body fleet to give passengers an extra 3-5 inches of legroom throughout coach. They did not recover the costs and walked it back. jetBlue provides more legroom through all of coach, and even I as a very tall person, don't go out of my way to book them.

Some people will pay more for extra legroom, and I think the current split of seating in planes is likely right around the optimal distribution based on who will and won't pay.

> Two, people can certainly be fooled; for a long time airlines have been playing a game of gradually ratcheting back amenities without being up front about it.

Kind of but not really. Yeah they're not going to put out a press release when they take the olives off your salad. Airlines are an incredibly low margin commodity business. Many years they're negative margins. American's current operating margin is 3.41% [1] This is typical. These aren't B2B SaaS margins we're talking about.

So generally when they take the olives off your salad, instead of putting out a press release they just lower fares on competitive routes. Because most people book on fare or based on corporate contract, which is a second-order effect of fare.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAL/american-airli...

[OrigamiPastrami]

> jetBlue provides more legroom through all of coach, and even I as a very tall person, don't go out of my way to book them.

How tall are you? I will literally skip a family vacation if I can't get a better seat on an airplane, to the point it's caused strain in my personal life.

I agree with your overall assessment that people will (usually) buy the cheapest thing, but I find it utterly bizarre a truly tall person wouldn't even care about being physically uncomfortable for hours on end. I'm curious if we just disagree on what "very tall" means, like 6' is not that tall.

[arcticbull]

I'm 6'5". To be clear I do always try for an extra legroom seat unless it's like 1 or maybe 2 hours tops. I don't go out of my way to pick jetBlue, so the "everyone gets legroom" thing isn't a real competitive advantage. I just consolidate my flying with a carrier and with even the lowest status tiers you generally get free extra legroom seating. Not giving everyone extra legroom seats means they can lower the sticker price and reward frequent fliers. The short people don't get nearly as much benefit from the extra leg room and don't value the seat as much so higher density means lower prices for everyone.

When I didn't have status I just paid for it, but every seat having extra legroom isn't in and of itself enough to move the needle for me.

[bobthepanda]

i think the Jetblue thing is historically true but not anymore.

The Jetblue thing is also not really altruistic, but a nice side effect of an optimization they did; the removal of the seats brought the capacity to their planes to a round number of 50, which happens to be the FAA required ratio of persons per flight attendant.

[novok]

IMO it's very costly to compare legroom and is often obscured and switched up. Also people might use 'legroom' to also mean more expansive things like shoulder width of their seat, and that is definately not something you can buy with economy plus. Seat width has shrunk several inches and is universally reduced on all airline by now. To get back to 18/19" seat width, you have to pay double or triple, which seems absurd for a 12% to 20% increase in width.

[wpietri]

> Kind of but not really.

You write this in a tone of contradiction, but as far as I can tell we're describing the exact same thing. I understand why the airlines do it, but it doesn't change what customers experience.