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>“It would have been nice if they did this in 1985,” Elliott said. “If the government does what I think it’s going to do, this is going to give airlines a licen
by mrob 8y ago
>“It would have been nice if they did this in 1985,” Elliott said. “If the government does what I think it’s going to do, this is going to give airlines a license to reduce space even more. I don’t see the consumer benefit.”
The obvious consumer benefit is cheaper flights. Smaller seats mean lower costs, and competition should force airlines to pass the savings on to consumers. If they're colluding to keep the savings to themselves, that's a failure of anti-trust law, not a failure of seat size law. I don't see why the government should force people to pay extra for luxury.
- bausshf 8y agoDon't be too optimistic about "smaller seats meaning lower costs" because it might not. Cereal packages has gotten smaller, but the prices for cereal hasn't gone down.
- jdpedrie 8y agoThat's a bad comparison. Generally, shrinking the size of a packaged good is a way to compensate for inflation without sticker shock, a huge problem in a very price-sensitive market like groceries. The chief the government measures inflation, in fact, is the Consumer Price Index, which measures the cost of a "basket" of consumer goods. [0] The cost of flying, on the other hand, has fallen dramatically since deregulation. [1] [0] https://www.bls.gov/CPI/ https://www.bls.gov/CPI/ [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...