How Technology Has Failed to Improve Your Airline Experience

Well this happened in all other industries that the tech has 'upended'. Stuff that happens to both guests and hosts in airbnb just can't happen in a hotel. Uber is definitely a poorer service than taxis - with some nasty stuff happening from time to time as well. This is unavoidable because all of these were done to optimize just one variable - price.

I frequently converse with people on the airline experience, and rarely get any understanding. People love crappy low-cost carriers with non-reclining seats, nonexistent legroom, no meals, etc, because that is how they can afford flying. Most people who fly now would travel by train or stay home if we didn't have deregulation and those crappy low-costs.

The laws of scale also dictate that good airlines are destined to fail, their cost disadvantage means they loose too many customers, and eventually their cost go up because of lower scale, and customer experience goes down because of less frequent flights and thus less convenient connections... they just have to become as crappy as low-costs, or die.

A generation from now, we will have a choice between EasyJet and a Learjet. With possible exception of a few very popular routes like transatlantic London-New York and a few others.

A nice exception is Russia where there is no deregulation, Aeroflow owns the sky and decides who can fly, and Putin pays for most of your (domestic) fare. I never fly domestic flights in Russia, and international costs are not subsidized, and not cheap at all, but quality is superb!