I know what you’re thinking…cheap? Ridiculous! It costs hundreds of dollars, and they’re gouging us for bag fees and legroom fees and fee fees…
But I recently found a ticket my grandfather purchased in the 1940’s, from Chicago to the east coast (I can’t recall which airport, but he was on his way to Fort Monmouth, so it was a one way ticket). $450, and it wasn’t first class or anything special. Last month, I flew Chicago to Philadelphia round trip for $385. Clearly, that $450 my grandfather spent in 194something was worth a whole lot more money in that era, and it was even more than I spent in unadjusted numbers.
So why haven’t airline prices kept up with inflation, and why do we think we’re getting such a bum deal today?
I dunno the answer. But one aspect of it is the psychology–for some reason, everybody seems to think saving money is the only important part of a plane ticket.
In every other consumer product, there is a wide range of prices and a wide range of quality.So people choose whether to shop at Walmart or Macy’s, or something in between.And for most products, the public splits about evenly–half want cheap prices and low quality, another 25-40% want medium prices and medium quality, and the remaining 10-25% prefer to pay higher prices for higher quality.
This is true for all aspects of travelling—except plane fares. Hotels and motels cover the whole range of prices and quality.Restaurants cover the whole range. Rental cars cover the whole range…
But plane fares? No, no.no…the one and only thing that people want is cheapest, cheapest and cheapest.
(the fancy services of business class and first class are minimal–maybe 5% of the seats in the plane, and most of those seats are filled “reluctantly”–i.e., as perks given by the employers. The person sitting in the seat would have chosen to sit in the cheaper fares if he had to pay it himself.)
I find it weird that lots of people who enjoy paying for a Hilton or a Sheraton resort hotel, want to get Motel 6 quality on the flight there–and then complain about it.
I can’t answer the airline economics side of the question, but people today expect to have a lot more stuff than they did 50 or 100 years ago, so the stuff has to be relatively cheaper.
When I fly, I rarely spend more than two and half hours in the air. I have spent more time than that waiting at the doctor’s office. And what do I normally do when I fly? I go to sleep. I’m usually unconscious before we’re even in the air. I sleep right through the beverage service and the in-flight movie. I don’t even care if I’m the aisle on next to the window 'cuz I am not going to be awake long enough to “enjoy” either. All I want to do is get to my destination as quickly as possible. I’m not looking for my flight to be an “experience”. Experiences are what I like to spend my money on.
I’d say the reason why flights are less costly now than they were in the 40s is because there are a lot more seats available available now than they were back then. Automatization has also helped tremenduosly (imagine how hard it must have been to track luggage before computers and bar codes). Flying’s also become quite mundane, whereas back in the 40s it was a luxury enjoyed by only the well-to-do.
And the airlines have noticed that if the person is faced with a quote from one airline that’s $89.99 (but you’ll have to pay $30 for the luggage and $15 to choose your seat), and the quote for the other airline is $110.50 plus $20 for luggage and seat assignment included… they’ll still instinctively want the $89.99 + fees one.
As soon as DeReg got going, the behavior pattern began manifesting itself: “Who cares if it departs at 4 am and makes three connections, it’s a $89.99 ticket”.
Because as **monstro **points out, the speed of jet travel means that for many people the journey itself is a trivial part of the trip so they just want to get it over with. Airlines are now seeking to consolidate and reduce total seats (while increasing seats-per-plane) because they passed the point of diminishing returns per additional flight some time ago.
And though employers sometimes pay for business-class trips, many of them when it is NOT an exec travelling (or if it’s a public sector outfit) will have somewhere a regulation *mandating *the cheapest fare.
Also, the level of service you got on a flight in the 40’s probably makes your grandpa’s ticket more comparable to a first class ticket today. Inflation adjusted, it would be something like $4000, which would still be steep for a first class full fare long haul ticket, but not astronomically so like comparing it with a coach fare.
I’m not sure $4000 is out of range at all for a first class ticket. Last year, my wife and I flew to Rome for vacation, about an 8.5 hour flight from Newark. Just for the heck of it, I looked into what first-class round-trip tickets would cost. Answer - $11,000 each. We flew coach. There’s nothing they could offer me in first class that I’d pay that much for 8.5 hours of.
I would be willing to pay more for more leg room. If I have the chance to pay extra for the exit row seat I do. But I still don’t understand the HUGE disparity between first and steerage class.
I don’t know what the statistics are, but I doubt there are many people who pay full fare for first class. I fly first class relatively often, and I have not once paid the full price. Sometimes I upgrade due to elite status on the airline, sometimes I’ll pay the relatively modest same-day upgrade fee, and sometimes when I’m booking flights with miles, I’ll book first class.
That said, I too wish there was more middle ground, especially for domestic flights. At least for international flights you have the business class option. I despise flying coach (for lack of space), but I can’t justify the cost of first class if I can’t get an upgrade of some sort. Some airlines have an “economy plus” or similar class that gives you a bit more space, but it’s far from ubiquitous (and it’s still the same uncomfortable seats, just spaced out more).
Some of the airlines have a “premium economy” section with more legroom. United calls it “extra legroom” seating while JetBlue calls it “Even More Space” seating. Here is a chart from Seatguru.com with more info.
And the huge disparity? First class is way more profitable. BTW, my mother was reminiscing about the service in coach class seats in the early 1970s (before deregulation). Free gifts for passengers (especially kids). Better meals (and on real china).
The 1940’s was before the Jet era, so planes back then used more fuel, were slower and less frequent. This scarcity and added expense led to higher ticket prices.
The last time I flew I paid full fare for a first class ticket, Cleveland - Burbank. My best friend’s wake. Fuck it, I wanted all the frills and no fees whatsoever. About $2000. Last minute.
Second time in my life I had bought a ticket, I was a newly retired corporate travel consultant, so I’ve flown world-wide business/first for free. I figured it was my turn to pay.
I don’t know whether this is true but from what I have read, one reason why flights are so cheap, especially in the US is because your pilots are paid very poorly considering how much training and responsibility they have.
This was stated by the airline pilot that landed that plane on the Hudson river. He stated at a press conference that the pay and conditions were so poor that he would not recommend any of his family to take up the profession.
Well, there are other areas in which advances in technology have made them more efficient and therefore more affordable- electronics and computers for one. When VCRs first came out, our family was one of the first to have one, and I believe they were close to $1000. Same with microwaves, our first one was maybe $500 (? I was a kid at the time so not totally sure), and now you can get them for 1/10 that.
As for people willing to pay more for hotels vs airline tickets, there is a huge disparity in prices- a cheap hotel may be $80, and a nice one $200, which is still in most folks’ price range. Compare to a $500 coach plane ticket, first class may be $5000 (the last first class ticket I looked at- just out of curiosity, can’t afford it unfortunately- was $9000 but that was overseas), which is out of most average joe or jane’s budget.
I think you’re underestimating the cost of a “nice hotel.” A $200 per night room is not the equivalent of a first-class airline ticket. Two hundred bucks might be the cost of a Hilton or a Marriott hotel in a big city, but a really nice room in a five-star hotel might be $500-1000 per night.
Well, but at the same time, it speaks to the fact that the airlines currently have a poorly differentiated product. There isn’t anything that you could point to that would be the layman’s equivalent of a “nice hotel room” vs the Joes Drive in Motel. It’s as if there was either the Ritz Carlton or the cheapest hotel you can find, and little in between.
I think his point was that in airline seating, there is no middle ground as there is in hotel rooms. The business class seats cost, typically five to ten times what a coach class seat costs, while first class is about twice what business class does. But there’s nothing in between.
It takes all of thirty seconds and the most rudimentary arithmetic to realize what a preposterous idea that is.
Let’s suppose Airline A pays its pilots $40,000 a year, which I think we can agree is pretty crappy for a professional, specialized job. Airline B pays its pilots $200,000 a year, which is excellent money. Every plane has two pilots.
Over the course of a year, a flight crew running a normal domestic route will probably make 400 flights, each carrying, let’s say, 150 passengers. That’s 60,000 passengers.
So the extra $320,000 paid by Airline B comes to just over five bucks a passenger.
Somehow I don’t think we’re talking about a $5 savings here.