Hacker News Reader

Comment by waterside81 | Hacker News Reader

Wishful thinking but highly unlikely. The airline industry has shown to be very, very price sensitive and customers, although they complain about service, really are just looking for the cheapest flight.

I've always thought the downfall of the airline industry is our (consumers') own fault; we search by price and only seem to deviate from price as our main criteria on occasion in the name of loyalty plans.

View on HN

There's a major difference between the behavior of leisure and business travelers. Leisure travelers have (historically) been price-sensitive in the extreme. Business travelers have been way more schedule- and airline-sensitive. This is why you see so many perks thrown at business travelers (free upgrades, etc.)—it's an attempt by the airlines to win the business of their most profitable clients.

As to whether airlines will be inspired to install more wi-fi, consider this: all the major US airlines that don't already have wi-fi on their entire fleet have announced plans to install it on a lot more of their fleet this year. They're hoping people—especially business travelers—will make their purchasing decisions on the basis of wi-fi.

Personally, I think I might care more about service when choosing a flight if I had some idea what the service would be like before hand. Right now I need to manually go look up reviews for the airline. It's also made worse because some airlines are really multiple different airline's put in one (usually via acquisition).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com