US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees

> If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege

This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.

I refuse to fly with United. I understand that there may not be 10 adjacent seats when flying with a big group, but spreading out a family on purpose just so you are more likely to buy an upgrade is evil.

I understand paying for checked luggage because luggage handling costs money. But purposely making the experience worse just so you can charge money for upgrades is evil.

Checked luggage charges are mostly about price discrimination and not cost savings.

They also free up the cargo hold so they can transport mail. Speaking of which, did you know the TSA screening area is a farce?

> > If you want to sit together, pay for that privilege

> This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another.

Bin-packing is tough (look at Kubernetes!). Economically, giving folks willing to sit in a random seat an extra $10 and charging folks who want to sit together $10 is a wash.

Evil is, you know, torture and genocide, not efficient allocation of limited space.

Can you elaborate on the Kubernetes bit

I’ve always wondered if it would be cheaper to just have everyone check their bags and eliminate the overhead bin. I wouldn’t be surprised if airline boarding was sped up by 2-3x this way.

Some seats are worth more than others (aisle/window vs middle). Putting families together means giving “preferred seats” away for no premium.

What do you mean there is no cost? Aisle and window seats are more valuable and can be sold for more, and this would force airlines to sell them to families without any up charge they would've received from other customers

> Speaking of which, did you know the TSA screening area is a farce?

My man, the TSA is a jobs program disguised as security theater. It's also a funnel for money into contractors' pockets (see: Leidos).

A lot of airlines have started doing this by "gate checking" bags.

If you're sitting together, that means at least one person is in the less-desirable middle seat, right?

I've heard that the boarding process itself is rarely the limiting factor in flights. They're usually waiting on other plane-related things (refueling? Pre-flight checks? I can't recall the details).

If it were, they probably wouldn't be doing their 8-group boarding process that takes 20 minutes just to let people start boarding, because gate-time is expensive for them.

I have no issue with airlines offering reserved seats for money. Let people buy their aisle seats and window seats and exit rows.

Most people don't give a shit where they sit, so most seats are not reserved. Traditionally, airlines tried to just put people close together when they booked together. When we check in, we just get random seats that are close together. That's okay. I'm fine with taking whatever seats no-one else wants.

If I understand United marketing correctly, they will actively sit you apart from others in your group unless you buy an upgrade. That is, instead of assigning you some of the free spots close together, you get put as far apart as possible, and they hope that you will buy an upgrade to sit close together.

Other airlines don't do that.

OTOH it would overwhelm baggage reclaim and everyone will get stuck there instead.

I don’t have any data to back this up, but I think window and aisle seats being more valuable doesn’t necessarily mean they can be sold for more.

I am very tall and I always pay for a seat with extra legroom in economy. Whenever I’m picking my seat early, almost every seat in economy is available. People could pay to reserve a window or aisle seat, but anecdotally it seems like almost no one does this. Everyone I know just tries to check in as early as possible so they can grab a good seat before they’re all taken.

I don’t think airlines are actually losing any money by seating families together. It’s not like all those window and aisle seats would have been paid for otherwise.

As a parent who once flew with a baby with an ear infection, I'll admit there were times I desperately wanted to be seated apart from her.

Is this a per-market thing?I’m from Chicago and therefore fly United with my family all the time. The website/app lets me pick all our seats at booking time in Economy class without any up charges.

Flying with an infant, I'm very happy I can bring a diaper bag and other essentials on board.

that's a problem for the airport. Faster turnaround for the airline though!

It's a benefit of "Economy" vs "Basic Economy". I saw it on an international flight. You pay 20% more and are allowed to sit with your family. At least that's how I understood their marketing. There also seem to be some exceptions for kids under 12, but I'm not sure how they work.

An aside or window seat next to an unaccompanied toddler is worth considerably less.

As a person who regularly flies international with just a carry-on bag, I very much prefer to get out of the airport with my bag in 20 minutes after I leave the plane vs waiting who knows how long for it to arrive and hope that somebody didn't break it/into it.

Newer planes/retrofitted ones with larger overhead bins with space for everybody are the solution.

nope. airport gets overwhelmed, aircraft get stuck because of processing, airline costs rise, ticket prices rise.

it's a single pipeline. every single one bottleneck has to be removed.

let's start with TSA.

I'm not GP, but I imagine it has to do with efficiently scheduling pods onto nodes to optimally support workloads, some of which have a resource affinity (CPU, MEM, Disk) that can only be supported by particular nodes. In this analogy the affinity would be a strong preference for isle and window seats or sitting with family. It's easier to have the pods sort themselves according to preference than to write a daemon to do it.

Evil can be small and banal. Intentionally creating a negative outcome (algorithmically distance families) and charging people to escape it (preferred seating fees) certainly rhymes with a protection racket. It's purely the bad kind of capitalism, where instead of charging people for value you've created, you create new problems that only you can be paid to solve.

The current situation is the worst possible. They cost tax money, they raise ticket prices, and they make air travel worse for no benefit. If minimizing the jobs program is impossible, make them sit in a back room somewhere they can't cause backups and ruin proposals.

> This is evil. There is no cost to the airline to put people who booked together next to another. It's seems like Mafia-tactic to seat people apart from another unless they pony up another $500 in upgrades.

The idea is that an airplane needs a certain revenue to run. Suppose it's 10k, and there are 100 passengers. Each passenger thereby pays $100.

However, some passengers (A) wish to sit in a big seat and are willing to pay for it, and others (B) don't care about seat size and are willing to give-up space for a cheaper ticket.

As such, 1 Passenger A may want to pay $250 instead to get a 30% bigger seat, while 3 passengers B give up 10% of their seat size and pay a $50 ticket. The airplane still collects $400 from 4 passengers as before, but the passengers are happier now. They have traded their individual desires, for something less valuable. A desired a bigger seat and thought $150 extra was less valuable than this bigger seat. B desired a $50 cheaper ticket and thought the smaller seat was less valuable. They traded and became happier.

You may say but nah, airlines will simply charge for bigger seats and keep the smaller seats the same price. But they don't, because they must compete with other airlines that don't. If they could do this they would've already.

For seat picking it's the same thing. A prefers to pay to sit close to a friend or partner. B doesn't care and prefers a cheaper ticket. Thus A pays a bit more, B pays a bit less.

I've always had to pay for seating as long as I can remember, I never cared enough (except long international flights), so I enjoy slightly cheaper prices than a world where there was no choice. It's not as evil as it may seem at first glance.

I've long accepted that Airlines charge for "better" seats. I don't care for the "good" seats. I'm happy with whatever seat they put us in.

What you seem to be missing is that some airlines have started to split up groups on purpose. When they assign seats, even if 75% of the seats are still unassigned, they put people who booked together far apart from another to make them pay for seats.

That's where it turns to evil in my opinion. Fortunately "normal" airlines don't do that yet so I know that I can avoid crappy airlines like Ryan or United.

It's the same concept though isn't it?

It effectively sorts people in group A who cares about seats (and thus pays to prevent random seating) and group B who doesn't care (and effectively gets a subsidised ticket price from A, by giving up their seating preference).

You could use the same argument to argue that Basic Economy passengers should be punched in the face when boarding.

Then there's a group A of wimpy rich kids (who pay to prevent getting punched in the face) and a group B who don't mind getting punched in the face (and effectively get a subsidised ticket from group A).

No you couldn't.

In my example, seats must be assigned. You can't seat people safely in an airplane without seat assignment.

You can assign it as an airline, or you can let the customer assign.

Not all customers care about assignment equally. Thus there is a market. And in a market you allow people to trade their value.

Pay more for preferred seating, or pay less and accept random seating. Both groups win, total welfare increases. Group A values seat-assignment more than money and gets the more valuable of the two. Group A values money more than seat-assignment, and gets the more valuable of the two. It's a classic trade scenario where both win.

The airline merely functions as the marketplace to allow people to trade, and to get to a more optimal scenario (pareto improving) where the total utility/welfare goes up.

Random seating ensures that everyone makes this trade, and thus ensures you get the closest to max pareto efficiency.

Without random seating you'd get the free-rider problem: those who don't care (or care only a little) about seat-assignment, don't get a discount that they value more. These people are not paying for a feature they don't value, and subsidise those people who do value it and are willing to pay for it independently! While those that care a lot about seating, aren't guaranteed the seat they want, despite wanting to pay for it. This decreases total welfare, it's a destruction of value.

Your punching example is different because it's introducing a harm for everyone. Everyone cares about not getting punched, it's below the baseline service. The baseline service is a ticket to safely go from A to B. Seat assignment is an extra feature above the baseline that some want to pay for, and others don't. Not getting punched in the face is a deterioration below the baseline, it's a nonsense idea to introduce it. That's why it's different. I

Of course the market mechanisms will work just the same, that's certainly true. But the morality or logic behind the airline introducing this is completely different.