Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

I've always been confused as to why people are so dissatisfied with airline quality. If what you say is all I care about is price and nothing else matters, then of course your experience is going to be awful as carriers slash everything to save money. If you are willing to pay (nicer seats, priority boarding, airport lounge access, food, booze etc) then flying isn't that bad. This goes double for flying international.

View on HN

Hmm. Could it be perhaps that cheap prices and bare-bones service isn't what the majority of people wants, and that since that happens to just be the most profitable thing for airline companies to offer, they pretend that's what the customers are demanding?

I mean it's not as if there's no precedent for that kind of behavior. The idea the airlines are entirely subject to the whims of consumer demand seem laughable at the surface.

Maybe phrased another way: What evidence do you have that this is what customers want?

If customers were categorically willing to pay for and expected nicer features then the nicer features wouldn't be optional, they would be standard and the prices would rise. The fact that we are going in the opposite direction with more and more standard features turning into options with correlated price drops supports my theory.

Similarly, if users cared about quality then budget carriers would be dying rather than exploding in popularity.

> What evidence do you have that this is what customers want?

The fact that coach seating fills up faster than first class? If the majority of people truly wanted comfort over cheap prices and lack of service, we should expect FC to be full on every flight, with airlines offering vouchers for downgrades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com