[Analemma_]

Everybody but the wealthy shops for airline tickets with price as their only criterion. Airlines are rational agents who operate in a famously competitive and low-margin business, so they respond to this demand-- indeed, they don't have any choice.

I have a lot of complaints about products and services that I can chalk up to various market failures or sinister actors, but poor airline experience is entirely on us, the consumer. Our revealed preference is for the lowest possible ticket price all else be damned.

[Arn_Thor]

I have racked up some air miles in my time. I am not wealthy, and price is a major criterion, but there are some airlines and airports I avoid at nearly all costs. I wish there were enough like me to put pressure on airlines to do better, but alas it's a losing battle it seems.

[fragmede]

The safety, even on the budget airlines is amazing. You wonder though, if they sold seats for $50, to get to the other side of the world, but you had a 10% chance of dying, how many people would take it.

[camgunz]

Nilay Patel (I'm gonna get this slightly wrong) has this story where he was talking to an airline CEO about standing-only tickets and the guy said "I know two things. If we did standing-only tickets we'd get roasted by the public, and those tickets would need the most popular tickets by far."

[kqr]

This was RyanAir's CEO. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/28/ryanair-sta...

[seydor]

people pay a lot more for private jets which are comparatively a lot more dangerous

[throwaway2037]

If you are flying a professionally managed twin jet engine aircraft (not turbo-prop), like Netjets, then the real world safety difference is negligible.

[skinfaxi]

This would make for an interesting aspect of a dystopian future. Accepted liability as a slider basically. There would obviously be entire regimes around auditing the published numbers (since companies would be incentivized to make their options appear less risky than they are). Pretty anarcho-capitalist.

[arjie]

Ah but it’s 1% that you bought though 2 out of 100 of the last flights crashed. You ask for a refund or you pull out the pandas to check the likelihood they aren’t living up to the promise?

[inigyou]

This is called a race to the bottom.