>There are more than sufficient airlines on major routes for competition (and you can see this when they get into fare sales for stuff like LAX-ORD for $50). W

>There are more than sufficient airlines on major routes for competition (and you can see this when they get into fare sales for stuff like LAX-ORD for $50). Wait, so because occasionally there are routes with excess capacity this means there is sufficient competition? You seem to have confused the concept of demand competition for some reason. They are orthogonal although related concepts. Airlines having "fire sales" on fares is also not very common. Airlines have adopted a practice called "capacity discipline" which is industry speak for limiting both the number of seats and flights to a destination so as to increase the ticket price[1]. Also it doesn't seem like you are at all aware of the amount of consolidation that has gone on in the industry in the last decade, four major airlines control 80% of the market[2]. Is that your idea of sufficient competition? And there are also many instance where one or more of those 4 don't actually have a direct flight option to your particular destination. >"Consumers could be flying airlines like Southwest and Virgin. The fact that they instead choose to fly on airlines like Frontier and Spirit shows that they don't actually care to spend the extra money to have reasonable seats or service." What a bunch of nonsense straw man BS this claim is - because there is a segment of the market that selects predominantly on price means that all consumers don't care? That is beyond absurd. >"I especially have to scoff at tech workers, who don't lack the money to make their travel experience more pleasant, but still take redeyes to save money and then complain about how much they hate travelling." Most people I know take red eyes when there is no other choice, examples are an interview or late meeting on the opposite coast. It's also really odd that you believe that everyone who is a "tech worker" is by definition well off financially. There is no shortage of "tech workers" who are between jobs, starting a company and don't yet have income, free lancers, recent grads with student loan debt etc. Odder still is that fact that you have made blanket assumption about people based on their industry and then have chosen to "scoff" at them based on own your own ridiculous assumption. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/business/airline-discipline-could-be-costly-for-passengers.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/business/airline-discipli... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/business/energy-environment/airlines-reap-record-profits-and-passengers-get-peanuts.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/business/energy-environme...