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Comment by jeffhwang | Hacker News Reader

> Also, passengers are probably going to start waking up to the realities of just how bad the air-travel experience in the US has become compared to so many foreign counterparts. If you want passengers to want your plane, design it without sardines in mind; People don't like being sardines.

I hope this is true. However, my sense is that the value chain is so elongated from aircraft designer/engineer/marketing/sales to the end customer (retail airline passengers) that those important signals are lost. Not to mention the financial incentives on the part of US domestic airlines to keep making the flight experience worse for end customers.

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With rare exception, people just buy the cheapest ticket. They moan and complain about this or that, but they still do the same thing.

So, airlines structure and furnish accordingly.

> So, airlines structure and furnish accordingly.

By cutting the number of economy seats and increasing the number of business and first class ones?

Airlines don’t care about the economy traveller. They are there just to fill the space for a marginal profit.

They need both. They want the high-margin business and first-class passengers, but with those alone the volume would be too low and overall prices too high to make operating feasible.

The high-volume low-margin economy customers keep seats filled to prevent wasted potential space. On most commercial planes, flight is only profitable if nearly every seat is filled.

> They need both.

No. If they could fill the entire plane with business/first class seats and sell out >70% (maybe even less) of it, you bet they would.

The only reason why economy class exists is because they can’t. But the demand for more premium travel is steadily increasing, which will lead to shrinking economy cabins.

So yes, they do need to fill the space. But I wouldn’t say that they need the economy passengers.

> > They need both.

> No (...) The only reason why economy class exists is because they can’t.

in other words, in nearly all cases they need both

How would you explain discount airlines that don't have business class at all?

You also contradict yourself saying they only profit from business class but at the same time they can't profit from business class because there is no enough demand for it.

Your statement doesn't make sense and what the poster above you said is right - they need both and that's the reason there are both.

> With rare exception, people just buy the cheapest ticket

With rare exception people just buy what they can afford. If people had so much money that they could afford to fly first class and it wouldn't impact their budget very few would get the lowest price they can find knowing that their experience in the air will be miserable.

Maybe you want a small team of big people.

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