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Every major airline gives the option of paying 10%-20% more and getting more legroom. United has Economy Plus, Delta has Comfort Plus, American Airlines has Mai

Every major airline gives the option of paying 10%-20% more and getting more legroom. United has Economy Plus, Delta has Comfort Plus, American Airlines has Main Cabin Extra...

mindslight 9y ago
Every major airline also sells their tickets based on transporting one human passenger, end of story. I'd be open to a price based on some linear combination of pitch/weight/etc. But shrinking seats so they don't fit actual people, and then upcharging for a few inches of "premium" space is downright fraudulent. It might only be 20% over their fantasy "full fare" prices, but it's a larger proportion of the actual prices most people pay.
- mFixman 9y ago
  Regular economy airplane tickets are a lot cheaper than they used to be N years ago for any N. I fit well in a regular airline seat. Why should I pay more because a fatter or taller person wants to sit more comfortably in an airplane without paying extra for a seat in economy plus designed for that exact purpose?
  - mindslight 9y ago
    "Why should I pay more" isn't really an argument in the context of a company that is trying to extract the maximum price from every single person. Someone else's price going down will not make yours go up. But as I said, if the variation in humans is really that large, then charging a linear combination for depth/weight based on actual costs would be completely understandable. For the current state, let's take a quick look at say United [0]. A regular ticket from BOS to LAX is $139, which is in line with the general range one would expect to pay [1]. The upgrade to "Economy Plus" is $99. So for a pitch increase of 20%, the price is 70% more?! This is price discrimination based on immutable physical qualities - straight up gouging. [0] I chose what I thought would be the worst offender here [1] and has been roughly the price for well over a decade, disregarding the new bag fees
regularfry 9y ago
And they reserve the right to give that seat to another customer at boarding time, so despite having paid extra, you end up with a seat you literally can't sit in for the flight, leaving the flight crew with a problem the ground crew have created. On top of that, the only refund you can get when they do this is the 10% surcharge for the upgrade, not the price of the seat you now can't use.
- briandear 9y ago
  I fly 75,000 per year on United and never once was my economy plus seat surrendered at the boarding gate involuntarily. Getting gate-bumped is extremely rare based on passenger miles flown.
  - regularfry 9y ago
    And yet it's happened to me twice, and I specifically avoid long-haul flights because of my height. This probably depends on the airline.
ramchip 9y ago
It was more like 50~100% extra last time I checked. Perhaps because I always fly international, and the economy plus seats are more popular on those?
al2o3cr 9y ago
Every major airline gives the option of paying 10%-20% more and getting THE SEAT PITCH THAT USED TO BE STANDARD A DECADE AGO. Fixed that typo for you.

Every major airline gives the option of paying 10%-20% more and getting more legroom. United has Economy Plus, Delta has Comfort Plus, American Airlines has Main Cabin Extra...

mindslight 9y ago

Every major airline also sells their tickets based on transporting one human passenger, end of story. I'd be open to a price based on some linear combination of pitch/weight/etc. But shrinking seats so they don't fit actual people, and then upcharging for a few inches of "premium" space is downright fraudulent. It might only be 20% over their fantasy "full fare" prices, but it's a larger proportion of the actual prices most people pay.

mFixman 9y ago
Regular economy airplane tickets are a lot cheaper than they used to be N years ago for any N. I fit well in a regular airline seat. Why should I pay more because a fatter or taller person wants to sit more comfortably in an airplane without paying extra for a seat in economy plus designed for that exact purpose?
- mindslight 9y ago
  "Why should I pay more" isn't really an argument in the context of a company that is trying to extract the maximum price from every single person. Someone else's price going down will not make yours go up. But as I said, if the variation in humans is really that large, then charging a linear combination for depth/weight based on actual costs would be completely understandable. For the current state, let's take a quick look at say United [0]. A regular ticket from BOS to LAX is $139, which is in line with the general range one would expect to pay [1]. The upgrade to "Economy Plus" is $99. So for a pitch increase of 20%, the price is 70% more?! This is price discrimination based on immutable physical qualities - straight up gouging. [0] I chose what I thought would be the worst offender here [1] and has been roughly the price for well over a decade, disregarding the new bag fees

regularfry 9y ago

And they reserve the right to give that seat to another customer at boarding time, so despite having paid extra, you end up with a seat you literally can't sit in for the flight, leaving the flight crew with a problem the ground crew have created. On top of that, the only refund you can get when they do this is the 10% surcharge for the upgrade, not the price of the seat you now can't use.

briandear 9y ago
I fly 75,000 per year on United and never once was my economy plus seat surrendered at the boarding gate involuntarily. Getting gate-bumped is extremely rare based on passenger miles flown.
- regularfry 9y ago
  And yet it's happened to me twice, and I specifically avoid long-haul flights because of my height. This probably depends on the airline.

ramchip 9y ago

It was more like 50~100% extra last time I checked. Perhaps because I always fly international, and the economy plus seats are more popular on those?

al2o3cr 9y ago

Every major airline gives the option of paying 10%-20% more and getting THE SEAT PITCH THAT USED TO BE STANDARD A DECADE AGO. Fixed that typo for you.