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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Profit in isolation is a meaningless metric in this context. In 2018, Air France KLM carried over 100 million passengers. So the profit is just 4 euro per passenger. That means very small changes in costs per seat can quickly move the company from the black to the red.

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Also, with full service airlines, business class is by far the most profitable use of their square footage. Cheap economy flights are really an extraordinary thing, but they’re never going to be the height of comfort. Personally, whenever I’m flying economy, I’ve mastered the art of simply shutting down any expectation I have of comfort from the moment I arrive in the airport, until I arrive at my destination.

That’s how we are going to end up with standing only places and paying for the toilet. Do not accept the unacceptable.

I think the subtext is that flights aren't supposed to cost what cheap economy flights cost; they should be substantially more expensive. So you can "unaccept" the discomfort by paying for them what they should cost.

Is how I read the previous comment.

I can get a seat on a flight that will take me to the opposite side of the world in less than a day for ~$600. That’s not unacceptable, that’s amazing. Cheap and fast international travel has to be somewhere on the list of most revolutionary post-industrialisation innovations.

Varig was an airline in Brazil that was amazingly nice. Even economy seats got real blankets and actual silverware for dinner.

You'd love it, if it were not for the fact that they went bankrupt in the 90s when the first low-cost carrier entered the Brazilian market.

There are plenty of carriers (some might even say all of them) today without standing places where you don’t have to pay for using the toilets and many of them are profitable. You don’t need to accept ridiculous things for that. It’s just that every time, one of them will try to squeeze just a few more cents out of you and if the public allows them to do that, all the others will jump at the opportunity.

> many of them are profitable

Until they aren't, and either they need to find way to cut costs or extract more value per-passenger.

> You don’t need to accept ridiculous things for that.

Then don't? What's stopping you from not flying with low-cost carriers?

I already avoid easyjet/ryanair, even if the tickets from some company like KLM/Aegean costs more than double.

>Personally, whenever I’m flying economy, I’ve mastered the art of simply shutting down any expectation I have of comfort from the moment I arrive in the airport, until I arrive at my destination.

Sounds like you've never flown on an Asian airline. I flew on Singapore Airlines a few months ago and economy there was like first-class on an American airline, but with smaller seats.

> I flew on Singapore Airlines a few months ago and economy there was like first-class on an American airline, but with smaller seats.

With flat beds and everything? How can they possibly afford that?

Perhaps I should say business class.

Anyway, I'm talking about the level of service and comfort: great meals, blankets, pillows, beautiful and friendly flight attendants, hot handtowels, free wine/beer, even some warm socks for wearing to the bathroom, are all standard in economy class. Several of these are probably not even available in First Class on American carriers, such as the handtowel or socks or free alcohol.

> Several of these are probably not even available in First Class on American carriers, such as the handtowel or socks or free alcohol.

I think you must have an atypical experience of US business or first.

Towels, socks, free alcohol are all basics on US carriers that you always get in business or first.

Free alcohol is available even in economy on every US carrier I’ve been on.

>Free alcohol is available even in economy on every US carrier I’ve been on.

Citation needed.

>>such as the handtowel or socks or free alcohol. >Towels, socks, free alcohol are all basics on US carriers that you always get in business or first.

No, I'm not talking about towels, I'm talking about a handtowel. It doesn't exist on US planes, because it's an Asian custom. It's a hot, wet towel that they hand out to everyone before every meal so you can wipe your hands. It's called an oshibori in Japanese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshibori https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/22372/in-asian-re...

> Citation needed.

https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/inflight/eco...

"Complimentary house beer and wines, soft drinks, juices, tea and freshly brewed illy coffee"

That's in economy.

> It doesn't exist on US planes, because it's an Asian custom. It's a hot, wet towel that they hand out to everyone before every meal so you can wipe your hands.

Yes, hot wet towels. You get them before meals on US carriers as well. Here's a video of them being handed out in economy on a domestic US flight.

https://youtu.be/KzUyCxFLQP8?t=85

Believe me now?

It’s probably the airline I’ve flown on the most. The flight attendants are nice, and you get a little ammenities bag. But none of that changes the fact that you’re packed into an economy class seat for x hours. The food is honestly not any better that other full service airlines either.

Honestly, I have no idea where you’re getting this from. There’s certainly economy classes out there worse than SG, but to compare it to any first class experience is complete nonsense.

The same seat gets used on most days, by many different passengers (and many of them are used by multiple passengers per day).

By a conservative estimate, profit per seat per year would be large hundreds to small thousands of euros.

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