Originally Posted by
ATOBTTR
Economics 101: if supply is constrained, the provider of the supply can charge a higher price for the now limited supply, driving out some of those who could previously afford it when the supply was higher.
Not necessarily. Since the staffing requirement is a step scale, a reduction in seating from 150 seats (requiring 3 FAs) by 17% to 125 seats still requires 3 FAs. A 200 seat aircraft currently requiring 4 FAs will still have 166 seats and still require 4 FAs. With many narrowbody aircraft currently operating right on the upper limit of the step scale before needing an additional FA, changing the seating layout from 3-3 to 3-2 isn't enough to drive a change in cabin crew staffing requirements on most aircraft - it just significantly reduces the amount of paying passengers for which that cost can be spread around.
Driving out the business models that have brought affordable air travel and made it available to more than the upper class doesn't sound like it's benefiting society. You said in your OP you don't care about airline shareholders, analysts, or executives but it's also evident you don't care about the segment of society that would be cut out from air travel by making it uneconomical on the mass scale that it currently is. You also don't seem to care about the downstream effects - both to the airlines themselves and continuing onward throughout many other aspects of society - that would happen from forcing several airlines to go under/cease operations and and several others to significantly reduce the size of their operation, nor understand where this would drive up costs elsewhere.
I don't see a major constraint in supply with a one seat per row reduction in capacity along with 1-2 rows to extend more legroom across the national fleet. Across the entire system, and given that not every aircraft would be affected as the seat width issue is primarily a Boeing problem, the impact overall would be fairly limited. In normal times, most flights were booked to ~~80% anyway, not 100%, and that will occur again as post virus travel demand eases off. While supply would be constrained to some extent, when prices exceed the market's willingness to pay, it will cause demand to fall until equilibrium is reached again.
As to LCCs, their business model is not just based on dense capacity - WN is not an ultra dense capacity, but Spirit is. So this would create more product competition in that space, not necessarily drive companies out of business. It will be upto Spirit and Frontier to decide how they want to rework their products to remain competitive.