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Comment by slater | Hacker News Reader

So is there, then, a market for an airline that offers substantially more legroom and larger seats (biz-class-size for the entire plane?) for a slight increase in price?

Aforementioned Delta Airlines had $1.3bn in PROFITS last year, so not sure about razor-thin margins.

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I don't believe they have actually flown a single flight yet but supposedly https://www.zedaerospace.com/ will be flying it's first routes sometime this year. They're claiming first class seating for all passengers on all flights. Prices look not unreasonably low if they actually deliver what they're claiming but they're also selling $100/month subscriptions that get you cheaper flights and...I'm not sure what else.

Flight comparison sites don't show any information about comfort, so passengers cannot pick it.

Meaning all they'll see is "Ultracheap: $50" Vs. "ComfortAir: $80" and pick the $50 option because that's all the information they're given.

You want to sell a nicer class of service, you need to change the entire industry to communicate it.

Nevermind comfort, bag fees, hidden fees, different amenities, etc. None of that is covered in most travel sites, just the fare. If there were a fare site that also had a comfort gauge for price it would spur competition. Moreso for something with a "Truecost" calculator that took into account bags, overhead space, seat pitch, food, terminal niceties, etc. This would be the ultimate air travel site.

It's been tried. Doesn't seem to work. Too many people pick flights on the basis of cost. British Air does have business class only between JFK and London City airport but that's obviously not a very representative pair of cities and is, I assume, standard business class pricing (i.e. multiples of coach).

I've never seen it, but I've long thought it would be interesting to see an airline campaign on such a feature. The problem now is that cattle class is cheap, and the next step up is a small increment in comfort but twice the cost.

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