[kvcc01]

This degradation in comforts of air travel is very regrettable. Especially when it comes to seat pitch, coach class is clearly denied what is necessary and, worse still, this is intentional. There's a lovely quote by a French engineer named Jules Dupuit going back to 1849, which explains the conundrum. I think he was talking about railroad cars but the argument applies to air travel just the same. Quote:

"It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriage or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches ... What the company is trying to do is prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich ... And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to the third-class passengers and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class customers. Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous."