Comment by jusben1369 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jusben1369 | Hacker News Reader

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Actually it's commoditization. There is very little differentiation in airline flying - particularly domestic in the US. So they get stuck competing on price. Imagine you're flying from NY or BOS to SFO. You have two choices. Pay around $500 per ticket with some price shopping. Have a horrible experience of cattle herding, no food choices, small seats. Or spend $2500 or something insane for slightly larger seats. Weird how there isn't an option for $500, $800, $1500 just like there's a Corolla, Camry, Avalon or Lexus. Now, the airlines will tell you that's because people just care about price and only price and that's why soon you'll need to drop quarters in to use the bathroom. But that's just opportunity to me. There are about 800 places you can improve the flying experience from the minute you hit the curb to bundled in Uber to and from to wide seats (vs just extra legroom) to food to entertainment to dedicated standing areas to "kids focused flights" (parents embrace business travelers avoid) to baggage rules........

Weird how there isn't an option for $500, $800, $1500

There is, sort of. It's easy to look at the interior of, say, a 737 and conclude there are only two or three "classes" (economy and first, and possibly some sort of premium-rate economy with extra legroom), but fare-wise there's enormous variation.

On -- to take an example legacy carrier -- United, the "economy" cabin is actually made up of fourteen different fare classes. Deciding how many seats to offer in each fare class on a given instance of a given flight on a given day is a stupendously complex task which largely gets hidden from the customer (for completeness' sake, "first class" and "business class", on planes which have them, have three additional fare classes each).

A big part of it is that there's more to it than just the seat, which is obvious since all those different "economy" fare classes end up in the same or very similar physical things-to-sit-on. The number of factors, though, is frighteningly large.

For example, your origin and ultimate destination factor into the fare, as do whether it's one-way or round-trip, and how far in advance you booked, and whether you wanted a refundable ticket, and whether it was booked by a corporate travel department on your behalf, and whether it was a seat offered to third-party travel-booking and search sites, and what day of week and time of day the flight is operating, and whether it's a seasonal offer to a popular vacation destination, and... that's the tip of the iceberg.

This is the Virgin America model in some ways, with affordably comfortable seats and a relatively livestock-free experience. But while customers like it[1], they're only just now turning profits after 6 years of building a fleet and routes[2]. Doing something different in the airline industry takes a lot of upfront time and money - and that's just for parts of the flying experience airlines actually have control over. The closest they get to changing the airport experience is better lounges and staff.

1: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329405/Virgin-Ameri... 2: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2013/08/07/eyei...

Do they not do economy plus (or equivalent)? I mostly fly internationally (not a lot of domestic flying in England) and there's usually the option of spending an extra ~£100 on a LHR-EWR return for extra legroom seats. I couldn't justify the jump to Business/First, but £100 over 15hrs of flying is a no-brainer.

The legacy carriers in the United States (American, Delta, United, US Airways) all have some sort of improved-economy seat with more legroom and/or more recline, and charge a varying premium to book those seats.

Yes, but for many flights, especially international ones, the charge for those seats is not worth it.

I was looking into flights to Japan, and the Premium Economy tickets are literally double the regular economy tickets.

Many domestic flights have Premium Economy for less than double the price, but it's still expensive enough and the benefits not great enough (generally only a couple of inches of legroom--no change in seat width, no better service, etc) to generally not be worth it unless you are flying cross country.

Problem with this is that airplane configurations are not easily changed; and accomodating 3 different sizes of seats with the risk of having to sell bigger seats for lower prices.... is not worth taking for most airlines (especially low-cost carriers)

Looks like a market opportunity for quickly-reconfigurable seats.

A lot of people think that, there are a ton of FAA regs related to seats. Everything has to be tested in crashes. That also why it takes airlines so long to change seats to the new entertainment ones with power and everything. Your seat is your number one safety in the event of a crash. You are actually supposed to use the seat in front of you to brace yourself. It has a certain give to it so you don't run in to a brick wall when you land hard. If seats were easily configurable, every possible combination would need to be tested. Also whenever you do any work on a plane, you must have all of the supporting documentation, just think how long that would take to turn around. Document each bolt that was removed, when it was replaced, where it was..etc.. a lot of hassle.

It's actually pretty easy for (e.g.) United to add or remove rows of their Economy Plus seating. They can make that change overnight.

When United and Continental merged and began adding E+ to the Continental fleet, most aircraft were completed pretty quickly since that change can be made during overnight maintenance at the hubs.

If you are able to design one that passes all FAA/EASA/CAA/<aeronautical regulatory body here> certifications, I think ALL airplane builders will hail you as their saviour. Not to mention the airlines ;-)

The seats sit on rails on the floor, so they can be swapped out or repositioned quite easily. Usually the Supplementary Type Certificate for each aircraft plans for this.

While being true, not all Seat configurations are automatically approved for operation. The swapping itself can - as mentioned - be performed overnight.

FWIW, I would pay a lot of money for an airline that would knock me out with some drugs and wake me up when I'm at destination (Toronto - Hong-Kong is a long and boring trip and I can't seem to do anything that truly distracts me in an airplane). Subjectively, this wouldn't be too far off from teleportation.

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