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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 wo

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.