Actually, I think the “in between” are the full-fare coach seats. I believe if there are seats available in business or first class, the airlines will let the full-fare coach class passengers upgrade either for free, or using frequent flyer coupons.
And full-fare coach price is a considerable step above most passengers’ nonrefundable coach. Then as mentioned there’s premium-coach and the “preferred seats” (different things, the latter are the more popular aisle and window seats in regular coach, available to reserve for a fee) where for shorter trips it may not be worth it to pay the additional price. But still it holds: the spectrum is really limited, and in the case of “preferred seating” you get nothing better other than being sure to avoid the middle seat. And in any case the airlines can maximize their take by cramming in a lot of coach seats and socking them with fees
I used to be able to do an “instant upgrade” on AA that on some flights would upgrade me to business for less than full Y-fare coach; haven’t been able to do that in a while.
With all the frequent fliers upgrading, the coupons hardly ever work.
:dubious: I’ve never had to pay any additional costs for getting an aisle or window seat as compared to a middle seat.
I’ve flown first class once in my life, from NYC to Seattle. It was nicer than economy, sure, but in no way was it worth 10x the cost of a coach ticket.
What airlines? You may be fortunate in having your choice carrier not yet assuming this cheap practice. Or else you chose aisle/window seats in row 36, as opposed to 12.
And as to your other point, that first class isn’t worth ten times the cost of coach. It’s a bigger deal on the long international flights, especially the overnight ones. If you can get a lie-flat bed in business or first class, you might be able to get a proper night’s sleep and attend a meeting the next day without looking and feeling like a wreck.
I always fly United (previously Continental) because I get free vouchers through them from some volunteer work I do. I don’t really like United, but at least they haven’t started charging more for different seats in the same section.
I’m not sure if anyone has touched on a couple other reasons why air travel is more affordable: airplanes themselves are claimed to be 55% more fuel efficient in 2000 than they were in 1960 – and I wouldn’t be surprised if fuel efficiency has gone up another 10% between 2000 and 2013 for new build aircraft in general. (But that’s a WAG across entire fleets of aircraft, not just cherry-picking a comparison between fuel-sipping 2013 model 787 with some legacy airplane.)
Also, flights are fuller now due to overbooking. More butts in seats means cost goes down for everyone.
Also, for international flights, business class simply didn’t exist until 30 years ago. Creating business class and the premium fares that go with it is a big revenue item for major airlines.
Pricing has gotten a lot more sophisticated. As opposed to there being a set price for a ticket (like at a movie theater), computerized ticketing systems can manage supply and demand to a level that simply wasn’t even conceivable back when Grandad took that $450 flight from Chicago to the East Coast. This means better deals for vacationers who can plan ahead and be flexible, while business travelers usually don’t get great deals by booking on shorter timeframes when they absolutely have to be there at a certain time.
But absolutely, the biggest driver of lower fares was deregulation, as has been mentioned. No question at all there.
Nobody has mentioned the elephant in the room, so here goes.
For most of the 1940s there was a war on.
Everything, and especially everything that required use of fuel that was not war related, was hugely expensive. A civilian flying anywhere is wartime would have been a huge luxury.
Even if the “something” in 194something was 46 - 49 the after effects of the war wore off only slowly. Materials and facilities were only slowly converted back to civilian use. Most of it was either spent getting soldiers back home (mostly '46) or sent to Europe to help with the rebuilding.
I suspect that two things in the late 40-s through late 60s had a lot to do with it- the advent of the automobile as a really big thing in leisure travel, and the decline in passenger rail.
Driving and rail didn’t compete on time or price, but flying competed on time, so airlines moved into that gap, and with deregulation, the prices fell so that flying could be competitive with driving on short hops, and so that people would fly to travel places like Boston from Texas, instead of driving somewhere closer, or making a longer trip of it.
For example, in 1964, a round-trip ticket from Houston - Kansas City was $42. In today’s money, that’s around $330. A round-trip SWA flight from Houston-Kansas City is not shockingly, $356 as of today (9/16/2013).
http://www.streamlinerschedules.com/tickets/atsfrr196410.pdf
Guess it depends on the airline. I was recently upgraded to first class because it was the only seat heading in the right direction after my original flight was cancelled. So, in exchange for an extra 8 hours on the ground, I got to board earlier, a bit of extra leg room, and a glass of inferior red wine. No entertainment console and the seats were the same school bus surplus vinyl that the folks in coach were enjoying.
This was coast to coast, and if I’d actually paid for the first class upgrade, I’d sure have been pissed if the premium had been more than $50.00. Near as I could tell, for this airline, first class was inferior to the service you got on coach when I first started flying back in the 80’s.
My mom and uncle assume, but do not know, that he was flying there because he was working for the army at Fort Monmouth. We know he was drafted into the army, working as a researcher/scientist for them around the time of the ticket. We don’t know if this ticket was purchased because he had some family business to attend to in Chicago and needed to get back east in a hurry, or on Army business or if that’s how he reported for duty at Ft. Monmouth. Sadly, I found the ticket when cleaning out Grandma’s desk the day after she died, so I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure why the ticket was purchased.
But yes, it was during war time and during his time of enlistment. Whether he was flying on official army business or not, no way of telling for sure.
So, coach used to be more like first class, and fewer people flew back then, so more supply *and *more demand have brought prices down. Fuel was more expensive back then, and airplanes used more fuel per mile. Makes sense.
A couple of people have brought up “deregulation” as a contributing factor. I’m afraid the only context I know of deregulation was in the recent banking fiascos. Could someone tell me a little more about what it means in the airline context, and why it drove prices down?
What airline?
There’s certainly a range of what first class is: from [yeah, whatever](http://www.airliners.net/photo/United-Express-(SkyWest/Canadair-CL-600-2C10-Regional/1385675/M/) to yes, that seems like a very pleasant way to travel.
The Federal government used to regulate airlines as though they were a public utility: schedules and ticket prices were set by the government. The fare structure attempted to make interstate short-haul flights cheaper than long-haul flights, and as a result, a ticket from Los Angeles to New York was quite expensive… and there was no competitive market, because the price was the price.
But then as the cost to airlines got lower, niche markets began to open up: the San Francisco to Los Angeles route was not regulated because it was all within California. People began to ask, “Hey, why does it cost (whatever) to fly from SF to LA, but (2 times whatever) to fly from DC to Boston?”
President Carter signed legislation ending the government regulation of interstate airline routes and fares, and the market took over. A lot of airlines went through bankruptcy and had to reorganize, but after that they could (gasp!) have sales and set fares through judging supply and demand.
Thank you!