With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
The real cost of air travel continues to go down as customers really only discriminate on price. Airlines have tried before to compete on other facets but everything failed.
The best you can do is look at specific carriers, and more importantly specifically what aircraft you'll be flying on.
A cross country flight in economy is going to be more comfortable in a Delta A220 than a United 737 Max. However, because of hubs and lack of competition many non-mega metros don't really have a large amount of choice.
Im not sure airline history agrees with you. My cursory knowledge from prior posts on HN like this had mentioned regulation/deregulation played a huge part in shaping the ways that airlines competed. I've heard that airlines don't compete on price/feature as much anymore because they don't have to, and kickbacks from all the credit card offerings/deals. Anecdotally I've noticed this year major airlines pulling out of certain hubs (southwest) so there is even less competition, but prices still seemed to go down among the remaining options!
Im not sure how accurate this is, so willing to be shown differently!
Maybe, I don't know. Sprit Airlines closing up abruptly like it did may refute your premise. They were the cheapest of the cheap, people hated them and now they are gone.
As the country exited COVID, mainline carriers began to really push their basic and barebones fares which directly took away business from ULCCs like Spirit. Spirit never really leveraged their credit cards effectively to help subsidize the cost of seats.
ULCCs thrive when they can maximize their time in the sky across as many different flights as possible. Filling up the day with many different flights allows them to rake in checked-baggage fees, reserved seat fees etc more often than longer mainline carrier flights. All of this went out the window when a large portion of their A320 fleet was grounded because of the P&W engine issues. This absolutely killed their utilization percentage.
Spirit died way more because of business management than it did because customers didn't choose on price.
That's not completely true. Delta Airlines became the most profitable of the four major US carriers specifically by focusing on an improved customer experience. This allowed them to charge slightly higher ticket prices, and led to increased usage of their branded credit card. United Airlines is now trying to mimic that model. Of course we've all had some bad experiences on Delta but the statistics show that on average their performance and customer satisfaction is higher.
> With numbers like that I guess they have no reason to make flights more comfortable or convenient. I just did a cross country flight and back 2 weeks ago and I'm still recovering from it. I really hate flying now.
My expectations are low and yet airlines somehow manage to fail.
I made the mistake of booking a flight with frontier
and they "delayed" the flight several times before eventually canceling the whole flight.
All airlines do this. It’s frustrating, and it has to do with playing the game with the DOT. They are punished for cancelling flights, but not delaying them, so the game is to delay rather than cancel until there is truly no option but to cancel. It’s an area of regulation that needs more work.
I am a current airline pilot, and I end up flying on all of them in order to get to and from work. Trust me, they all do this. The impact to you may be less if it’s an airline with more flights, because that airline has more options to recover and fix your experience, but they all do it.
The best you can do is look at specific carriers, and more importantly specifically what aircraft you'll be flying on.
A cross country flight in economy is going to be more comfortable in a Delta A220 than a United 737 Max. However, because of hubs and lack of competition many non-mega metros don't really have a large amount of choice.