Hacker News Reader

Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

Yet people continue to vote their purchasing dollars for too-tight seat spacing - because the cost of roomier seats is for-sure and up-front. Vs. hope springs eternal on the reality that you'll get.

View on HN

The options are usually either “dirt cheap economy” or “crazy expensive business”.

For some reason business class is often like 5x 6x the economy! Why is there no middle class?

Shop around airlines, you can find some that offer a middle ground - Premium Economy or Exit Row.

At 6'2" I've never really had a problem with someone reclining in front of me, and if someone behind asked nicely I'd go to upright lock position.

Of course, I usually don't have a foot bag which makes a big difference.

Anything that fits under the seat in front of you will also fit hugged up to your seat under your knees to allow you to extend your legs once the plane has taken off.

I do that on exit rows regularly (except during takeoff and landing of course)

It’s called premium economy and it exists on most major airlines.

There is: premium economy.

Also, business/first class is often much less than 5-6x the economy price. In fact I'm not sure I've ever seen it that much higher.

On transcontinental flights 5-6x sounds about right. My last flights between Europe and North America or Asia were typically like

- Economy $500

- Premium eco $1500

- Business $3000

- First $6000

And the gap can be wider on high-end airlines (15-20k for a first class ticket).

Not on Southwest, which I generally prefer for other reasons, but United almost always has seats with about 6" of extra leg room available to upgrade to for 10%-20% more, as an option. I often pay for this. For the comfort itself and to support such an option. I just don't like the fact that the easy thing to sort over on flight search engines is price and airlines like United now often have the cheapest seats the middle ones.

Probably because the profit they'd lose by business class travelers downgrading to it would be more than the profit they'd gain by economy class travelers upgrading to it.

Business class is just that - usually paid with someone else’s money and therefore those passengers aren’t price sensitive.

Relying on "voting with dollars" for something like this is not going to work, because that requires an idealized free market.

Air travel is not an idealized free market. Frankly, nearly nothing in our current circumstances even comes close to acting like an idealized free market, because one thing that requires is enough disposable income for all parties that paying more for something preferred is not likely to cause significant financial hardship. (And before anyone says "but it's only an extra $12 for premium economy" or whatever, it's not just this specific choice—it's about the mindset that you have to adopt when your purchasing power is so constrained, to consider every decision and try to be frugal.)

I just abandoned paying about $12 more to get more legroom on a flight. The flight itself was an unexpected $200 hit and I didn't want to pay more than I had to.

In the US it seems there is not enough competition and as well their are significant barriers to entry for new airlines.

> In the US it seems there is not enough competition

You can just stop there and you'll be accurate about a major part of the source of almost any of our current problems.

Which problem goes back to not regulating greed well enough. I need other greedy bastards to jump out of bed with a new idea on how to make a buck, i just don't want them to take $1.10 when they do it...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com