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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe that "customers want cheap flights more than they want comfort".

Really customers have about as much choice in the comfort of a flight as they do in the cost of health care services.

For years it has been "pay 4 times as much as economy or suffer", in the last ten years they've introduced "basic economy" which at least is realistic.

I might rather fly in a widebody on a domestic flight but I don't get the choice. One reason you hate to fly is that you hate to fly in a 737 (or A320) and you never get to fly in anything else so you just don't know it could be better (at a lower cost per seat mile!) in an A220 or E195.

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People vote with their dollars, many legs have multiple options and multiple seat options. Almost everyone goes with the cheapest option.

I've flow from NYC to Chicago $90 round trip. It's incredible how inexpensive flying as become.

This is a naive comment. The airline industry is hardly competitive. You do realize the issue is the limits on gates. Please visit Canada and our shitty airline and telecom monopoly/oligopoly to understand how airlines can lower service, make money and pass almost nothing back to customers.

What I can say is that if you to any other country, developed or not, the flying experience seems to be better than the US. For instance:

* not getting groped by the T.S.A.

* not having to book a flight a month in advance to get a good price

* paying less

* being treated like a human being

TSA precheck solves the first one

No it doesn't. If the precheck lanes are closed you get to go through the regular line first. That's it. Add to that, there is no evidence to show that our intrusive security is any better than the former metal detectors that existed prior. Flying is needlessly impacted. It's theater as it's trivially easy to bypass most security measures in place and get weapons on board all you want. The best security measure that was implemented was locking the cockpit during flight. It's the only one that made any real improvement in security and it cost nothing.

Yeah, but it “solves” it at a monetary and privacy cost (albeit relatively small for the former).

It bothers me that we tolerate various personal possessions (in this instance privacy) being taken away and then given back, generously (/s), for a small fee. I would rather be groped and spoken down to then hand more information/money over to another poorly-managed organization.

Moreover, the Airline-Security group has always been reactive rather than proactive. I don’t see how TSA pre-check prevents anything in the first place. What’s to stop someone from deciding at some point after the Pre-Check process that they want to create havoc on a flight? Nothing. Then we’ll have Super-Pre-Check, for only $190 and this time you “only have to” give a DNA swab. Sorry for the cynicism, etc, but I doubt I’m alone in calling the whole thing a facade.

Anyway, I forgot my initial point, but there’s my rant.

Not living in and avoiding visits to a surveillance dystopia also solves this problem.

I'm fine with paying a bit extra for more comfort and better service on a flight, but anything short of double the cost of the cheapest coach-class ticket never seems to get me that.

Soon after the 2008 financial crisis I flew from Ithaca NY to Washington DC multiple times for about $100.

These flights went through what is now American's hub in Philly.

I thought, gee, I'd like to take my son to Philly but then I found they charged $400 for the flight from ITH to PHL.

When the pricing obviously is disjoint from the cost to provide the service, the airline industry just can't expect us to take anything they say about pricing and service seriously. It's just like it is with these pharmacy benefit managers.

I've been trying to vote with my dollars for a long time. The problem is that what used to be economy is now premium and it costs twice what the current economy seats cost. There is no gradient, it's cattle class or $$$$$

Yes but economy today is half the price of what it was 30 years ago!

And since 2005 they've been rising.

Tell me by what means I can "vote with my dollars". Is there a travel site where I can sort flights by seat pitch?

I see options to sort by price, by airline, by number of minutes in the air, or by number of transfers, but I've never seen the option to sort by seat pitch. Half the time, it's nearly impossible to even figure out what kind of aircraft it will be.

I choose by price because it's the most relevant of the limited and mostly useless options that we're given.

Personal space is a competitive advantage. Hotels get this. The website for the nearest hotel to me has a top-level "ROOMS" page, with photographs and square footage of every room. I will pay a little more because I know what I'm getting. With air travel, I have no way of knowing which flight will pack me in like a sardine, so I might as well save the money and spend it on a hot meal at the end to recover.

Given the option, I will rarely go with a more expensive option if I know I can stand the cheapest. Standing to get 50%? hell yeah.

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