Originally Posted by
karachi
The market is fickle. AA introduced 'extra space' a few years ago and promptly returned to sardine seating. if the market wont pay a premium for the extra leg space, there is no incentive for the airlines to do it. for all the whining, people will still use online engines and pick the airline whose fares are $10 less than others.
AC is better than the other NA airlines. Browse the other forums in this place and you'll find most of the threads are complaints. EK, CX, SQ, BR all.
Yes, it's all very strange. On the one hand, these cheap fare-seeking passengers are too low value to warrant recognition or development of their loyalty, which makes them more likely to go for the cheapest airline. On the other hand, they're valuable enough to force airlines to disrupt their product offering for high value loyal passengers by adopting sardine can configurations.
As for AC being better than all NA carriers, I don't think anyone can definitively make that assertion since there's not a whole lot of evidence to substantiate it. Assumptions that were true 5-10 years ago don't match the reality of 2017, no matter how often one repeats them.