4 ms·

The largest piece of the puzzle is air travel has progressively gotten worse over the last few decades since the deregulation of the airline industry, it really

The largest piece of the puzzle is air travel has progressively gotten worse over the last few decades since the deregulation of the airline industry, it really doesn't matter than new planes have more space or are more fuel efficient. Airline companies will still pack more people in like sardines and charge for more and more for baggage since their stockholders want it.

Aloha 8y ago
It's also become affordable to pretty much everyone. Flying used to be really expensive, its just not now.
pochamago 8y ago
But that's how you end up getting new bargain airlines to drive the prices back down. And the demand for tickets has only increased, so it's not surprising that established brands raise prices
- repsilat 8y ago
  Yeah. Passengers pick tickets based on sticker price, often/usually through price search engines. Connections and travel time are also factors. Baggage isn't. Leg-room isn't. Food isn't. Even "the most convenient airport" is often not important to passengers' purchasing decisions. It's hard to blame the airlines when they're just responding to incentives the passengers are giving them. And tickets are cheap, right? Can't complain too much about price competition, and I don't think you should really complain at all about a la carte pricing. It's the fairest way to do things (and it's what we all ask of our cable companies -- "I don't want to pay for sports/luggage, just give me HBO/beer!")
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    How often is info on legroom or food actually available when shopping for tickets, though? Price is often literally the only concrete information available when buying a seat on a flight.
    - chooseaname 8y ago
      As far as legroom is concerned, Frontier makes it a feature you can decide on. But, you probably don't want to fly Frontier; they're not very good.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    > Baggage isn't. Leg-room isn't. Food isn't. Which, interestingly enough, is at least in part an API problem. Was at a talk by some people from IATA and ThoughtWorks a while back, and apparently the standard ticketing APIs that at least all the third party booking agencies use simply don't have room for innovative features. So for example, I think it was Air New Zealand that had a product where you could buy the middle seat to keep it empty. But that wasn't something that could be represented in the APIs, so you could only book it on their own website.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > Which, interestingly enough, is at least in part an API problem. > Was at a talk by some people from IATA and ThoughtWorks a while back, and apparently the standard ticketing APIs that at least all the third party booking agencies use simply don't have room for innovative features. If that's the case, then Southwest should be able to innovate very easily in this area, because they don't use third-party ticketing. They could have separate zones with more or less legroom.
    - jpatokal 8y ago
      I think you're referring to the Sky Couch, which isn't just an empty middle seat, but converting three economy class seats into a bed (just) big enough for two to snuggle up. https://www.airnewzealand.com.au/economy-skycouch https://www.airnewzealand.com.au/economy-skycouch But you're right, the average GDS can't cope with this.
      - mpweiher 8y ago
        Yeah, I think they've expanded on the idea in the meantime.
  - Aloha 8y ago
    I'm a frequent business traveler, I generally pick based on arrival/departure times, and carrier service level. Price is maybe the third or fourth item down on my list.
gumby 8y ago
> The largest piece of the puzzle is air travel has progressively gotten worse over the last few decades since the deregulation I challenge this (I have been flying since 1967 and have multiple millions of frequent flyer miles). I will agree that the typical flight quality of an economy passenger today is worse than it was in the 1970s. But consider: 1 - many more people are able to fly today than could so in the days of regulation. 2 - The market, not the shareholders, has chosen the feature/price point they want: ultra-ultra-low-cost airlines (Ryan/Spirit) don't dominate the market; a plurality of flyers are willing to pay a bit more to get more than that, while attempts at launching higher levels of default service have suffered. So it isn't that people always choose the cheapest (or all we'd have is Spirit). At the same time you can pay more for the full-service experience if you want (business, called first in the US). 3 - The whole experience is safer and more comfortable than it used to be. An original 747 was spacious, but prone to accidents, more stops because there was no long range flights (Sydney-London is 24 hours with one stop now; in the late 70s it was 36 hours with four refueling stops). And the business and international first are a lot more comfortable; business today costs about what coach did in the 70s. My first flight was on a VC-20 (I have a BOAC junior log book -- signed by the captain of each flight! -- of every flight I took between 1967 and 1975) and I flew 747 in 72 and frankly I'd not want to fly that way again. Oh yeah, planes had smoking sections into the late 1990s (and later in Russia, Korea, parts of Africa, and probably other places I didn't fly). What has gotten worse is the histrionic rubbish before you board. What a waste of human life the TSA is.
- Aloha 8y ago
  I disagree with your contention that the 747 was unreliable, in its first decade of operation it only had 7 hull loss accidents. A comparable number to the DC-10 or A300 - interestingly enough, much more than the L-1011. I do agree with you completely about the security theater aspects of the TSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_hull_losses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_hull_losses
  - gumby 8y ago
    Yes, that was a careless mis editing on my part. Thank you for highlighting it. What I meant to say was that yes, you had more room in a 747, but overall passenger flight safety these days is amazingly high in an absolute sense and a massive improvement over flight safety of the 60s and 70s.

Aloha 8y ago

It's also become affordable to pretty much everyone. Flying used to be really expensive, its just not now.

pochamago 8y ago

But that's how you end up getting new bargain airlines to drive the prices back down. And the demand for tickets has only increased, so it's not surprising that established brands raise prices

repsilat 8y ago
Yeah. Passengers pick tickets based on sticker price, often/usually through price search engines. Connections and travel time are also factors. Baggage isn't. Leg-room isn't. Food isn't. Even "the most convenient airport" is often not important to passengers' purchasing decisions. It's hard to blame the airlines when they're just responding to incentives the passengers are giving them. And tickets are cheap, right? Can't complain too much about price competition, and I don't think you should really complain at all about a la carte pricing. It's the fairest way to do things (and it's what we all ask of our cable companies -- "I don't want to pay for sports/luggage, just give me HBO/beer!")
- crooked-v 8y ago
  How often is info on legroom or food actually available when shopping for tickets, though? Price is often literally the only concrete information available when buying a seat on a flight.
  - chooseaname 8y ago
    As far as legroom is concerned, Frontier makes it a feature you can decide on. But, you probably don't want to fly Frontier; they're not very good.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > Baggage isn't. Leg-room isn't. Food isn't. Which, interestingly enough, is at least in part an API problem. Was at a talk by some people from IATA and ThoughtWorks a while back, and apparently the standard ticketing APIs that at least all the third party booking agencies use simply don't have room for innovative features. So for example, I think it was Air New Zealand that had a product where you could buy the middle seat to keep it empty. But that wasn't something that could be represented in the APIs, so you could only book it on their own website.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > Which, interestingly enough, is at least in part an API problem. > Was at a talk by some people from IATA and ThoughtWorks a while back, and apparently the standard ticketing APIs that at least all the third party booking agencies use simply don't have room for innovative features. If that's the case, then Southwest should be able to innovate very easily in this area, because they don't use third-party ticketing. They could have separate zones with more or less legroom.
  - jpatokal 8y ago
    I think you're referring to the Sky Couch, which isn't just an empty middle seat, but converting three economy class seats into a bed (just) big enough for two to snuggle up. https://www.airnewzealand.com.au/economy-skycouch https://www.airnewzealand.com.au/economy-skycouch But you're right, the average GDS can't cope with this.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      Yeah, I think they've expanded on the idea in the meantime.
- Aloha 8y ago
  I'm a frequent business traveler, I generally pick based on arrival/departure times, and carrier service level. Price is maybe the third or fourth item down on my list.

gumby 8y ago

> The largest piece of the puzzle is air travel has progressively gotten worse over the last few decades since the deregulation I challenge this (I have been flying since 1967 and have multiple millions of frequent flyer miles). I will agree that the typical flight quality of an economy passenger today is worse than it was in the 1970s. But consider: 1 - many more people are able to fly today than could so in the days of regulation. 2 - The market, not the shareholders, has chosen the feature/price point they want: ultra-ultra-low-cost airlines (Ryan/Spirit) don't dominate the market; a plurality of flyers are willing to pay a bit more to get more than that, while attempts at launching higher levels of default service have suffered. So it isn't that people always choose the cheapest (or all we'd have is Spirit). At the same time you can pay more for the full-service experience if you want (business, called first in the US). 3 - The whole experience is safer and more comfortable than it used to be. An original 747 was spacious, but prone to accidents, more stops because there was no long range flights (Sydney-London is 24 hours with one stop now; in the late 70s it was 36 hours with four refueling stops). And the business and international first are a lot more comfortable; business today costs about what coach did in the 70s. My first flight was on a VC-20 (I have a BOAC junior log book -- signed by the captain of each flight! -- of every flight I took between 1967 and 1975) and I flew 747 in 72 and frankly I'd not want to fly that way again. Oh yeah, planes had smoking sections into the late 1990s (and later in Russia, Korea, parts of Africa, and probably other places I didn't fly). What has gotten worse is the histrionic rubbish before you board. What a waste of human life the TSA is.

Aloha 8y ago
I disagree with your contention that the 747 was unreliable, in its first decade of operation it only had 7 hull loss accidents. A comparable number to the DC-10 or A300 - interestingly enough, much more than the L-1011. I do agree with you completely about the security theater aspects of the TSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_hull_losses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_hull_losses
- gumby 8y ago
  Yes, that was a careless mis editing on my part. Thank you for highlighting it. What I meant to say was that yes, you had more room in a 747, but overall passenger flight safety these days is amazingly high in an absolute sense and a massive improvement over flight safety of the 60s and 70s.