The problem with this is that the airlines don't sell these seats at a price that is proportional to the increase in seat size. Going from nine to 10 seats across on a 777 increases maximum revenue by 11 percent. Reducing pitch by three inches increases revenue by roughly another 10 percent. BUT, adding this additional revenue is not without substantial cost. It's not free for the airlines to fly all of these additional customers. I don't know what the marginal cost is of adding additional passengers, but they must be served meals, their bags must be carried on international flights, they must be compensated for bumps, etc. I would guess that the net increase in revenue from all this seat packing is less than 10 percent, but it's something that could be easily determined. In any even, whatever that figure is, that is the amount the airlines should be required to offer larger seats for, that and no more. If they want to have a higher class of service great, but they should also be required to offer bigger seats where people can pay for just the space and nothing more.

I think it is pretty obvious that the airlines are making their coach product as miserable as possible in order to force people to pay a very inflated price to upgrade to what used to be the standard coach product. Government regulation for the benefit of the citizenry is what government is for, and this regulation is well overdue.