The thing to remember about flights is that the airline isn't really making much money on coach. The $/sq ft on first and business is much higher and is the sou

The thing to remember about flights is that the airline isn't really making much money on coach. The $/sq ft on first and business is much higher and is the source of nearly all their profit. But there just aren't enough people buying premium seats to fill a plane, so airlines fill the rest of the cabin with filler passengers (coach) who basically pay the airline's cost/sq ft. There are usually plenty of people who want those seats, so there's little need to compete for that business. But they compete hard for the premium travelers and they schedule flights based on anticipated premium demand, not coach demand. Imagine if five-star restaurants sold leftovers at the end of the night. From the perspective of someone buying those leftovers, it wouldn't seem like the restaurants were competing all that much. That's what's going on with airline coach...you're buying the airline's leftovers from the passengers they actually care about.