This cannot be emphasized enough; **airline tickets were almost unaffordably expensive back in the good old days. ** When my parents took me to Disney World in 1977, they paid as much for three round trip tickets from Syracuse to Orlando as I would pay today to take my wife and kids to an all inclusive report for an entire week, including the flights. In those days you were paying business class prices for economy class. Giving you five bucks with of airline food was the least they could do.
The way it works today is simply what passengers want. People can kvetch, but the pricing arrangement is based on the fact that most customers are insanely price sensitive and will go to enormous lengths to save money. If you offered people a $30 discount to not have a seat at all and have to just stand in the galley, there would be more demand for it than there is room in the galley.
Along these lines you can buy ridiculously low airfares on budget carriers like Frontier. My brother flew from Austin TX to Philadelphia PA last year for $29.
And yet despite that, Southwest (and I presume a handful of other airlines) have some of the lowest fares in the industry, AND don’t subject their customers to the “Torture of a thousand nickels and dimes” either. You can check bags, change flights, call and ask questions, whatever, and they don’t charge you for it like most other airlines do.
I think the issue that I have with it is that the big airlines really do seem to act like a sort of cartel, in that if one levies a certain fee or charge, the rest follow suit really fast. I’d think that if customers are really as price-sensitive as is supposed, imposing additional bullshit fees for stuff that was once complimentary would lose you business, as people would choose your competition to avoid your lame fees.
But when they ALL do it in a short period of time, there’s no avoiding it. And, from what I can tell, it’s not like the rise in baggage fees correlated to lower overall fares from the airlines either. Instead, baggage fees are a freaking goldmine for airlines.
True. But I would rather have the airlines build their planes with one less row of seats, so that we could have a couple inches more legroom back in cattle class. I’d gladly pay an extra $40 per ticket for the comfort and the airline would make money on the deal.
I flew quite a bit when I was in grad school, not making a lot of money, and with reasonable flight selection it was quite affordable - and that was the 1970s. I flew a ton for business and pleasure in the '80s and did not pay an arm and a leg, though I could afford it more then. I also enjoyed flying then - no longer in most cases.
The difference between then and now are the extremes. Now you can get cheap fares if you work at it, but last minute fares or changes and you’ll wind up paying a lot.
Today’s fares are partially from what consumers want but also what the few remaining airlines get away with. I’m also a Southwest fan, and they manage to make money with free bags and a relatively rational pricing system. Want a good seat on Southwest? Either pay a small fee or set your alarm to get your boarding passes 24 hours ahead. On the other hand I couldn’t book a trip on American for work because every available seat on one leg was an extra charge, which work wouldn’t pay.
That’s really not why the boarding order is being done (on most airlines).
If you compare boarding order with other passengers while you’re milling around on your next flight, you may notice that people seated in the same rows are in different boarding groups. They did studies that found having all the people in the back of the plane board first gums up the works. There’s a big backlog as everyone sorts out their luggage, gets settled in, etc. for every row.
What’s better is if you board a few people in each section of the plane in each boarding group - giving preference to the window seats for the earlier boarding groups, and leaving the aisle seats for the later boarding groups. If you’re the window seat at the back row of the plane, you should be boarding in the first group. This way, there should be only one person per row mucking about with luggage and whatnot, so the other passengers can get by that row to go to their own seat (instead of the other passengers in that row clogging up the aisle, preventing people from passing by).
However, priority boarding and general dumbness tends to muck up the system fairly quickly - particularly at the point when a flight attendant will have to force their way through to the argument over who gets the overhead bin inevitably caused by guy-in-the-back-row tossing his stuff in one of the early row bins.
As to the topic: I’ll never fly overseas in Economy Class; Business or First Class, or nothing. I flew to China a few years ago (in Business), and my seat faced into Economy. I got to watch those poor schmucks sitting bolt upright, packed in for the entire ~20 hour flight. While I reclined my seating pod into a bed (that almost fit 6’ me), put on my complimentary nightmask and blanket, and slept.
I’m surprised people don’t regularly throw blood clots from deep vein thrombosis from that.
That makes too much sense. I’ve never seen it. The one problem might be that it could separate families (especially with children) into different boarding groups.
United does it this way, and people in families get to board in the first group (or they may assign everyone the same group.) It does work better, but of course is not perfect because all the various elite passengers still get on first.
IMO the modern “travel industry” is nothing short of appalling. I’ve had to take a few airline journeys recently and found the following to be true 100% of the time. The ONLY part of the transaction that occurred as promised and on schedule was the transfer of my funds. Flights were delayed, overbooked, seat assignments screwed up; car agencies messed up reservations, discounts, and vehicle promises; Hotels provided less-than-promised rooms, in-room devices and wifi inoperative… the list goes on. I’m usually infuriated at some point in the journey, but it has nothing to do with the 1st class travelers. I’m fed up with the travel industry as a whole.
Quoting myself from a 2014 post on the subject:
*As far as I can tell, all my money flowed to the various businesses on time and uninterrupted, and all the dollars were complete and usable. I held up my end of this bargain. But absolutely no one held up theirs. Every single exchange was late, changed, missing, and/or carried unexpected charges. Not a single entity in the entire chain delivered what was advertised or agreed upon.
So what are your experiences? Does it seem broken to you? According to my fellow travelers, what I experienced is nothing out of the ordinary. They seem to take a perverse pride in how much they endure to spend a week somewhere. For me, I’ve already cleared “self-managed” travel with the manager, and will use my RV (for reimbursement) on all the but the longest trips.*
And as I declared above, I have used my RV for all business trips since then. The reduction in stress is amazing; I arrive when I planned; my commuting vehicle arrives with me and is ready; all the “appliances” in my room work perfectly; and I can raid the minibar without worry.
The only thing that astonishes me about air rage is how rarely it happens. I’m a grown up and can control myself but there are always assholes who can’t. My son works for an airline and was attacked during his first year on the job. I posted about it here.
Disclaimer: All my travel recently has been under 1000 miles. I’d have to shut up and take the plane if they started sending me further.
That’s exactly how they want you to feel. Recently I have read several articles saying that airlines are intentionally making everything ad miserable as possible to motivate you to pay for comforts and services that were once free.
