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

> Set the floor too low and people fly less because it's too crappy.

Seems like a great opportunity for an airline to be less crappy and make a lot of money selling tickets to all those people who are "flying less" on other airlines, no?

So the question then becomes why hasn't someone done that already, if the floor really is "too low"?

High barrier to entry, consolidation, and collusion. Look at how many airline mergers have happened over the past decades.

That wouldn't explain why the reverse happened. Everyone introduced the crappier economy tier; even the airlines initially saying they wouldn't eventually caved and now there's a crappy economy tier default. Moreover, gradually these crappy tiers converged, including some (united iirc) getting slightly less crappy following user demand.

Most people want cheaper tickets and don't shop on quality. In the rare cases that they do airlines readily adjust. But the airlines trying to offer quality as the default would go out of business

Wouldn't it make sense for regulators to focus on those problems then, rather than on setting arbitrary industry-wide limits on what level of service consumers are allowed to buy?

Price aggregators like Google Flights continue to show the crappy tier by default, which means that airlines have to offer that tier to appear competitive. No idea why Google wants to build its product this way, but there are only a few companies in this business.

One of the fundamental truths of American aviation is a significant fraction of fliers will buy the cheapest ticket every time. They’ll bitch about it. But if you cut some leg room and a few dollars off your tag, you’ll swing them from another.

Basic economy doesn’t exist because of Google Flights. It exists because it sells. Well enough that it sustained entire discount airline fleets until the majors copied their model.

The last flight I was on was American Airlines. We waited in the plane while they tried to figure out to start it because the auxiliary power unit was out, and the generator American uses to start planes with no APU was also broken, so they had to borrow one from another airline. And no APU also meant no air conditioning until the plane is started.

It was only a 30 minute delay but the heat made it miserable.

I paid for a name brand airline, paid to choose a decent seat, could have paid for more upgrades, but no amount of money short could prevent me from waiting out a delay in a hot cabin because the airline failed to maintain their equipment. The folks in first class faced the same miserable heat.

It's a market for lemons. Paying more doesn't assure quality, it just means you spent more money to get screwed. So people aren't willing to pay.

Many airlines offer different fare classes. For a return ticket half way around the world, I can pay $1100 for Economy, $2800 for Premium Economy, $3900 for Business Class and $6900 for First Class.

It seems you have to charge a big, big premium to deliver a less crappy experience.

And even then, the experience is only better in some dimensions - your checked luggage receives the same handling no matter what ticket you buy.

Don't forget private charted jets. Those fill the >$7k hole for anyone willing to spend through the nose and they give the best experience of any flight.

The cost is around $1k/10k per flight hour.

> no?

No. Because people don't know how crappy it will be when they book.

They're just juggling prices and scheduled times.

People who aren't flying very frequently and don't have a trustworthy source of knowledgeable recommendations -- that is, a substantial majority of people -- will never take enough flights to know which airlines are worth $X more. If they even have many options for their route and time.

I don’t want basic economy because it means my kids will end up scattered across the airplane instead of sitting with me. So I always have to upgrade to the “normal economy” seats. I’m willing to bet a large chunk of money that a huge fraction of the airlines’ customers do the same “upgrade” because their sites are more or less built around the idea of funneling people into it. Yet on Google Flights there’s no easy option to specify that I want this popular product: the only options are Economy, Premium Economy (a very different product), Business and First.

Need to plug my Chrome Extension here, flyontime.app tries to help with this

Was it an afternoon/evening flight, on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday? Was it in Orlando, Miami or Newark in the summer?

flyontime.app helps you with this (I know, massive plug, but hugely relevant to this discussion and 100% free with no strings attached).

I think you are inverting the reason for the charge. Enough people are willing to pay a big premium for "less crappy".

Google flights actually has an option for Economy (exclude Basic) now. I’m not sure when this was rolled out. Previously, you could accomplish the same functionality by adding a single carryon bag in the drop down to force non-Basic.

Thanks! I didn't notice it because it's invisible when you initiate the search, you have to search first and then go back and change the cabin class. I wouldn't say this option is hidden exactly, but it certainly isn't made particularly easy for users to find.

Please create your own ShowHN thread rather than spamming this one. While you're at it be sure to explain how your Chrome extension will fix the problem of a major carrier not properly maintaining its equipment.