Originally Posted by
canadiancow
I bet they would.
As it stands right now, you can get to the gate, and the seat map has every non-preferred seat full, and 20 GTEs waiting for their preferred assignments.
If you can sell 5 square feet for $100 but can't sell 6 square feet for $120, you're going to continue down the 5 square foot seats.
Likewise with J. If it takes up three times the real estate, and you can only sell it for twice the price, you're not going to bother.
The correlation between square footage and price ignores the profit motive.
If everyone is willing to pay more, the price the market can bear would go up, as would fares across the board. What would be more profitable:
- using 3 planes to serve the same number of people as 2 could before?
- raising prices in all of the cabins - including Y?
The latter is far more efficient IMHO, because volume will win. And this will be sold under the guise of 'maintaining flexibility in case the market goes south", a la Rouge.
Paying 10% more isn't going to get you 10% more legroom. It's just going to add 10% to the profit margin. That's why US airlines are going HD in the future while reporting record profits on current configs.