Originally Posted by
hirohito888
Airlines are already spending their profits on employee bonus, which indirectly should increase quality of service. Airlines will spend money to increase their marginal profits, and that segment is clearly in business class.
As rankourabu noted, the comfort of a Y seat bought at basic fare or Y seat with all the options is still the same. Or what is the difference between Y mainline seat vs. Y Rouge seat that you can't customize and purchase options for. It's one thing to rant, but blaming a group of people who are supporting flights or carriers that would not have otherwise existed doesn't make much sense. Think of all the net benefits this has brought, we now have long-haul LCC (AirAsia X, Scoot, Norwegian, Rouge) and connecting new city pairs (SWF-EDI, SIN-TXL, YUL-OTP) and offering affordable travel. AC is just offering (or reacting to) what the market and consumers want.
I think the product you're looking for no longer exists or it's so niche that airliners would not spend the effort to cater to. Which is surprising given the ton of options airliners have now (from buying miles to preferred seats to lounge access to meet & greet).
The only worthwhile comment there hirohito888 is your last paragraph. You are correct, the product pretty much no longer exists and the airlines no longer bother to cater to the niche market it now represents. But I disagree that it is surprising. There's nothing surprising about the middle market being squeezed out in favour of cheap seats. It's been going on for many years now. Ever since the first airline reduced a seat pitch in Economy, that was the first step backwards.