Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

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Similarly, it's ridiculous how they charge for checked luggage.

Now, wait, let me finish! I don't mean in the confused sense of "lol everything should be free!"

What I mean is, checked luggage is inconvenient for the passenger (less access, have to wait), while using the least scarce part of the cabin -- they can't sell tickets to fly in the cargo hold, while they want to allocate whatever passenger-usable space they can for paying passengers.

So, if anything, they should charge for carry-on luggage while making (some level of) checked luggage free.

The system we have now -- the opposite -- creates perverse incentives all around: passengers are encouraged to avoid using the perfectly usable cargo hold, and instead, cram increasingly absurd amounts into their carry-on allotment, testing the unwillingness of airline employees to say, "sorry, you're over your limit, you'll have to check that". And then people have more pieces to deal with, choking up the loading and deplaning procedures, and bringing more of their (potentially dangerous) items through a security checkpoint...

Every time I fly, I notice a sea of people toting enormous bags, as if to say "tell me can't take this on. Just try."

Southwest Airlines, which has played a sort of "moneyball" game with aviation, came to the same conclusion that you did, including two checked bags in the ticket price (except they permit carry-on luggage for free). At-gate time decreases and the amount of flights increase when passengers aren't jockeying for carry-on space in the overhead compartments when they should be entering or exiting the airplane.

Frontier and Spirit airlines have adopted closer to the policy you describe. Checked luggage is $5-10 cheaper than carry-on. Their customer service posture is hostile, however. They charge for printing of boarding passes at the airport and getting a ticket altered to accommodate a lap infant (free in the US) takes over one hour on the phone.

I'm not saying I like any one of these airlines more than the other carriers. Southwest's moneyball strategy means they charge exorbitant amounts for tickets purchased within one week of the flight, even if it risks a vacancy. I prefer the consistency of the commodity carriers even though the Southwest experience is better for economy travelers.

My understanding is that they resell any extra hold space for cargo, so they do actually have a financial incentive to keep passengers' bags out of there.

EDIT: there are also costs in baggage handling though I don't know how the economics of that works out.

This assumes they don't make any money from selling space in the cargo hold for air mail couriers.

Can't they sell carry-on space too?

Right, but if we assume passenger space trades off one-to-one for cargo hold space [1], then the airline could reallocate the overhead bins to cargo (e.g. raise the floor). Then they could sell out even more cargo space as mail. So, in equilibrium, passengers should have to "compensate" (pay a premium) for the airline's lost opportunity to rent out the space.

Instead, everyone gets some of that premium, human-usable space for free. But if people are going to get some lump of space for free, why not make it the cargo hold, which is less constrained (doesn't have to be human usable) and thus cheaper? They're effectively letting people with more expensive requirements (must be able to access my stuff during flight) be subsidized by people with less expensive requirements ("I can wait until after the flight to access my stuff").

[1] which is probably true enough to a first approximation; you could redesign the interior to have more cargo space and less passenger space

Is floor height (and thus window positioning, ...) something an airline can order customized? (genuine question, I always thought of that stuff as fixed, but I could very well be wrong)

I assume the airline can happily fill the hold with paid cargo instead.

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