4 ms·

I've always wondered why the main 'innovation' in the airline industry (when it comes to lowering fares) is to treat customers more and more like herd animals.

I've always wondered why the main 'innovation' in the airline industry (when it comes to lowering fares) is to treat customers more and more like herd animals. There has to be better ways to make flying affordable while maintaining both safety and comfort. Last time I flew the reclining feature in person's seat in front of me was broken and it was 5 - 7 inches in front of my face for the duration of the flight. I couldn't even read my book. I got a free soda for my trouble. In my view flying has become something exclusively for the wealthy who can afford the half-way decent seats made for real humans who have dignity. For me, flying is now only something I do where the importance of my presence supersedes the cost of a decent seat. Otherwise, a video call will do.

qmr 11y ago
There is not much to wonder about. It is because it is what the market responds to. Everyone bitches. No one pays more for more service.
- baby 11y ago
  Once I had the opportunity to get a business ticket expensed, I looked at the price: 5 times the price of a coach seat.
- macinjosh 11y ago
  And if companies only offered what the market asked for there would never have been personal computers or smartphones. It takes someone who has vision for what could be to change the world through innovation. Not a bunch of marketing monkeys surveying customers to death.
mikeash 11y ago
How else would you propose to cut costs? Maintenance, crew, and fuel are already near the technological limits. Profits are basically zero. The only remaining ways to cut prices are to cram more people into the same space, or make people pay for extra services. And the customers demand lower prices no matter what. They crave it. The airlines are just giving people what they want.
- macinjosh 11y ago
  über for planes? /s
rayiner 11y ago
It's a combinations of physics and resource economics. There is a theoretical maximum efficiency in any Brayton cycle, which is in practice limited by the maximum temperature at the turbine blades, which is itself limited by metallurgy. Improvements on that front come very slowly--fuel efficiency has only about doubled since 1960, has improved very slowly since 1990. Except for the recent cratering of fuel prices, these improvements in fuel efficiency have been more than eaten up by rising fuel costs. But, hey that's pretty much the entire world outside of computing. Did you know that a modern coal plant is only about twice as efficient as one from a century ago? Same thing will happen in computing too, soon enough: http://imgur.com/NFysh http://imgur.com/NFysh.
- pcwalton 11y ago
  I don't like those charts because they focus on consumer CPUs and neglect the GPU. The GPU is what all the extra die space is going to these days on consumer CPUs. On the server you're seeing 18 core CPUs announced last year [1], so we are indeed seeing multicore scaling in both the consumer and server markets. It's just that, for consumer CPUs, the new cores are GPU cores instead of CPU cores. [1]: http://ark.intel.com/products/81061/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2699-v3-45M-Cache-2_30-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/81061/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-...
empath75 11y ago
When people say stuff like this I have to wonder if they have any idea how most of the world lives. Have you seen trains in India or busses in Latin America? The worst seat on the worst airline in the world is better that sitting on an un-air conditioned chicken bus in Nicaragua for 7 hours during a farmer protest, let me tell you. And I wouldn't say that anyone on that bus lacked dignity.
- macinjosh 11y ago
  Wow, you have a twisted view of the world. I never said people who fly coach or who are crammed into a bus or train in the developing world lack dignity. I am saying the people who run the transportation companies don't treat their customers with dignity. Big difference. Besides that there is nothing wrong with aspiring for better travel. Why accept that we have to be crammed onto airplanes, busses, and trains. We should be looking for ways to improve quality of life for everyone.

qmr 11y ago

There is not much to wonder about. It is because it is what the market responds to. Everyone bitches. No one pays more for more service.

baby 11y ago
Once I had the opportunity to get a business ticket expensed, I looked at the price: 5 times the price of a coach seat.
macinjosh 11y ago
And if companies only offered what the market asked for there would never have been personal computers or smartphones. It takes someone who has vision for what could be to change the world through innovation. Not a bunch of marketing monkeys surveying customers to death.

mikeash 11y ago

How else would you propose to cut costs? Maintenance, crew, and fuel are already near the technological limits. Profits are basically zero. The only remaining ways to cut prices are to cram more people into the same space, or make people pay for extra services. And the customers demand lower prices no matter what. They crave it. The airlines are just giving people what they want.

macinjosh 11y ago
über for planes? /s

rayiner 11y ago

It's a combinations of physics and resource economics. There is a theoretical maximum efficiency in any Brayton cycle, which is in practice limited by the maximum temperature at the turbine blades, which is itself limited by metallurgy. Improvements on that front come very slowly--fuel efficiency has only about doubled since 1960, has improved very slowly since 1990. Except for the recent cratering of fuel prices, these improvements in fuel efficiency have been more than eaten up by rising fuel costs. But, hey that's pretty much the entire world outside of computing. Did you know that a modern coal plant is only about twice as efficient as one from a century ago? Same thing will happen in computing too, soon enough: http://imgur.com/NFysh http://imgur.com/NFysh.

pcwalton 11y ago
I don't like those charts because they focus on consumer CPUs and neglect the GPU. The GPU is what all the extra die space is going to these days on consumer CPUs. On the server you're seeing 18 core CPUs announced last year [1], so we are indeed seeing multicore scaling in both the consumer and server markets. It's just that, for consumer CPUs, the new cores are GPU cores instead of CPU cores. [1]: http://ark.intel.com/products/81061/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2699-v3-45M-Cache-2_30-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/81061/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-...

empath75 11y ago

When people say stuff like this I have to wonder if they have any idea how most of the world lives. Have you seen trains in India or busses in Latin America? The worst seat on the worst airline in the world is better that sitting on an un-air conditioned chicken bus in Nicaragua for 7 hours during a farmer protest, let me tell you. And I wouldn't say that anyone on that bus lacked dignity.

macinjosh 11y ago
Wow, you have a twisted view of the world. I never said people who fly coach or who are crammed into a bus or train in the developing world lack dignity. I am saying the people who run the transportation companies don't treat their customers with dignity. Big difference. Besides that there is nothing wrong with aspiring for better travel. Why accept that we have to be crammed onto airplanes, busses, and trains. We should be looking for ways to improve quality of life for everyone.