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Comment by FreakyT | Hacker News Reader

> the flying experience gets worse every year

People always say this, but I haven't seen any evidence that it's true. In my view, the flying experience at least in the US has actually gotten better over the last few years. United, for example, added free seatback IFEs. (About 10 or so years ago, you had to swipe a credit card to watch anything.)

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I don't know how long you've been flying or what airlines you use, but the situation was very different pre-9/11. 2 checked bags and seat selections were free, you could walk/pick up family at the gate, and onerous security checkpoints weren't a thing. More importantly, seats had more room.

Sure, you had to read skymall instead of watching a movie during the flight, but tablets didn't exist yet so we didn't know better.

Qualitatively the situation is worse today, even if the difference is usually exaggerated.

Parent comment asserted that "flying gets worse every year", which is a very different declaration than "flying got significantly worse after 9/11"

Other than the security checkpoints, all of that happened incrementally over time. 9/11 is just a convenient before/after for the airline industry.

It got worse after the shoe bomber and then worse again when the airports found out they could make more money selling water after security by only having ‘convenience’ warm water in the toilets.

The nickel-and-diming continues.

This is not just post 9/11. Airlines have been cramming more seats onto planes[1], the quality of the seats has been going down. There didn’t used to be a single airline that had no-recline seats, now there are many. Charging for carry on or forgoing drink service to save money also wasn’t a thing until a few years ago, now it’s everywhere.

Airlines are pushing people as far as they can in order to maximize cash extraction. It’s no surprise more people are snapping.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-08-11/airlines-h...

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