6 ms·

Showing median people what the upper class steals from them seems like a reasonable thing to do. I think, there isn't any situation where it's so obvious. One

• tjpnz 2y ago
  Might motivate them to work harder, right?
  • trilbyglens 2y ago
    Or to be born into the right family/country/situation in their next life?
    • admissionsguy 2y ago
      This sentiment just promotes learned helplessness. While the world is by no means fair, flying first class is achievable for any able bodied person living in a first world country.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • SideQuark 2y ago
      The majority of the rich are first generation. It’s far easier to become rich than to be born rich.
• bradley13 2y ago
  How is first class stealing anything? Without it, there would just be more second class seats. Not more space per seat.
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    To start with, if there was no first or business class, there would be more room for everyone else on the plane ? It’s pretty simple actually.
    • bradley13 2y ago
      Disagree. The airlines would just add more cattle-car seats.
      • admissionsguy 2y ago
        Or worse, or there might be fewer flights since in general, first class subsidises the economy class on a price per inch of plane space basis.
        • AmericanChopper 2y ago
          We don't have to speculate about what they might do, as "the whole flight is economy class" is basically the budget airline business model (even though some of them have some flights that have a premium class). Apparently you can run an airline where the entire plane is cheap seating, and the outcome is the level of comfort and service provided by budget carriers.
          • jorvi 2y ago
            Percentage-wise, budget operators don’t really skimp that much on things like seat pitch compared to mid-tier operators. The way RyanAir operates is with dark patterns. They have very strict luggage rules. Everything is optional. Their booking has ambiguous wording, causing less-savvy flyers to purchase options they don’t need. They sell RyanAir lottery tickets (!) on flights. It’s like playing a game that is solely fueled by cosmetic microtransactions. If you can/know to not give in to the various trappings, you get to play a good game for free. Except in this case the game is air travel and the win condition is extremely cheap airfare :)
• SideQuark 2y ago
  Per volume or per weight, first class pays more than economy. They’re subsidizing seats in economy. So by your logic, economy is stealing from first class, not the other way around. Before first class, fewer people could afford to fly. Airlines adopted first class to lower costs for a wider range of people to afford to fly. Either Freakonomics or Planet Money has an episode to cover exactly this.
  • bitshiftfaced 2y ago
    There is some minimum volume that all seats must take up. I think the cost function is really about how much volume you're buying excess of the minimum. What would be interesting to see is how these compare when you look at the $/(volume - minimum volume). I'd expect that coach is already pretty close to the minimum.
    • SideQuark 2y ago
      > think the cost function is really about how much volume you're buying excess of the minimum You’ll not be able to define minimum very well. It’s also not sensible to assume any volume flies free, since it costs to fly any volume. The cost to fly the plane is paid for by passengers, and the cabin has a certain volume. The cost function is exactly based on the volume and weight used per passenger. There is no ill-defined minimum volume that costs zero.
      • bitshiftfaced 2y ago
        No one said there is a minimum volume that costs zero. There is a distribution of passengers requiring different amounts of space. The airline basically decided on some minimum that will be big enough to seat some percentile of passengers. (Presumably, the extreme right tail will have to buy two seats.) The airline doesn't sell a quarter of a seat or a half of a seat, so it doesn't make sense to compare seats in a way that assumes that this minimum portion of volume could cost a different amount for different passengers. It can't be broken up, so passengers always pay for all of it. I'm saying that we should treat this minimum as a fixed cost. The airline could outfit the plane with all seats at this minimum volume to maximize seats. Then, the cost of a seat is the fixed cost for the minimum plus the cost of volume excess of this minimum. We should subtract the fixed cost and compare the excess volume per the remaining price.