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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

For everybody who doesn't travel with kids, who will now see a small increase in base fare, this is a financial negative.

But, I'm with you - "humanizing" airline travel a bit is probably a net good. These days, basically nobody enjoys flying for myriad reasons (almost all of which are vaguely caused by a "race to the bottom")

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The cost of this is negligible if it exists at all.

Charging for access to the already-existing seat selection feature when booking is a classic tactic of price discrimination to squeeze more money from people who can afford it.

So this could impact profits, but not costs.

Yes, we agree.

Clearly solution here is to increase price of tickets for underage children. Which is the fairest way for everyone.

Considering the main cost is fuel, why not weight passengers at take-off and charge a supplement accordingly ?

Cost-wise, kids should be 50% off.

Should build some rows with mini seats and tiny legroom for the kids.

Make it more like a resort where you hand off the kids to the on-site daycare and enjoy a carefree day. Need a staffer, but the extra seating capacity should cover it.

We have on-board showers, individual cabins, sit down bars, but where’s the onsite daycare?

And adults that want to save money can squeeze into the tiny seats. Once that catches on we can have a new junk fee for an oversized tiny seat, it can be even the new base fare even. /s

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