A lot of pathology in air travel is related to the fact that people use aggregate search engines to find flights and sort by price. The lowest up-front base far

A lot of pathology in air travel is related to the fact that people use aggregate search engines to find flights and sort by price. The lowest up-front base fare tends to win. So that encourages airlines to nickel and dime later, such as by charging for bags and a million other things, making the whole experience worse. If the whole price had to be flat and bundled into the ticket the experience would be better. It's also an industry that competes on price, and that tends toward a spiral to the bottom in quality. They aren't allowed to skimp too much on safety stuff, and if they did it'd cost more in the long run, but they are incentivized to make seats tiny and uncomfortable and nickel and dime.