The distance between the back and front of the plane will keep widening
 

See this week's Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/busine...249e1cca2038c|

UGH!

While the majority continues voting with their wallets, it'll only increase. Ops, decrease - the pitch. :td:

I'm not seeing an issue with this. Flying in any class Y in particular is cheaper than ever and you quite literally get what you pay for. Flying both long haul business and economy I honestly don't think Y is as bad as people make it out to be.

Perhaps some entrepreneur should seize upon this huge opportunity. The new altruistic airlines (AA) can have spacious seats and marvelous service throughout coach. They will just have to raise the prices as needed to make a profit. People will ditch the cram 'em in airlines in droves, perfectly willing to pay more for better product. All these airlines that pack in the customers will be bankrupt before you know it.

What could possibly go wrong?

I don't mind provided they expand on premium economy and other "middle" options. I only fly business/first if someone else pays for it or it's an upgrade, but long-haul in Y is starting to simply be no option anymore on the newer planes with seat width and pitch decreasing a bit more with every new configuration.

I assume that was sarcasm. People have voted exactly the other way with their wallets.

I don't think that passengers' behavior is quite as black and white as articles like this make it seem.

I don't know that the average passenger knew that he was telling airlines to squeeze us as tight as sardines because he chose the $25 cheaper flight on Kayak.

Economy Plus/Comfort/MCE seats seem to be selling well enough to non-elites. Also Jet Blue is doing well with its more roomy accommodations even in Y.

Besides, even if passengers were specifically clamoring for more legroom, the airlines would be reducing pitch anyway to keep their profits healthier. That's what has been and will continue to be the driver for this kind of seating change, regardless of customer sentiment or behavior.

Economy class flying in the US and TATL is substantially less affordable for the average American household than it was five, ten, fifteen or twenty years ago.

The DOT fare data and inflation discounting games doesn't tell the whole story, but it does contribute to the evidence that these airfares are less affordable now than they used to be.

The airlines aren't squeezing in customers to cut more customers a price break -- the airlines are cramming in more passengers per area in order to increase profits .... even at the cost of passenger (dis)comfort.

That does not mean fares aren't cheaper, airlines are a business and you quite literally get what you pay for

Do you have any statistics/proof to back this argument? Average airfare compared with average inflation adjusted household income would help.

Thanks.

+1

Yes, but you'll have to find it yourself as I did repeatedly before.

But you'd do better in finding what I stated if you focus on inflation adjusted household income of a specific type. ;)

I don't see how American families becoming relatively poorer (I think that's what you're trying to say) is relevant to the discussion.

Yes. And your point is spot on. Most customers have clearly indicated they will forgo comfort to save money. The article, incorrectly, implies this is a societal class warfare issue.

I'm sure the average customer doesn't think about or understand this dynamic. Regardless, the airlines will sell what the customers buy (whether the purchase consciously or subconsciously doesn't really matter).

We all have our preferences and these can be lumped into many different groups. Some will pay for J/F and some will pay for EC. The fact of the matter is simple. Most people will chose the lowest price. Airlines might be able to fill an entire plane with people that are willing to stand for the whole flight.

IMO, the airlines are trying to take care of (i.e., get the most money from) from what I guess are the 10% that are willing to pay for niceties (J/F) or a little extra space (EC). If the demand for (or profitability of) J/F/EC becomes greater than cattle class, airlines will up the price for those services and/or offer more of them. The demand is not there, so they don't.

The most intriguing thing is how far the airlines can go before the overwhelming majority of "lowest cost no matter what" crowd changes their behavior. My guess is the majority will never pay a lot more, they will simply fly less.

Here's an Atlantic article showing how airfares have dropped 50% in inflation adjusted terms in 30 years. Good graph.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...oticed/273506/

And here are some charts showing that US mean and average incomes rose pretty steadily until 2008 and have been flat since then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona..._United_States

But since income is flat and airfares are down, I'd say it's the opposite of the original claim. Even including baggage and fess, costs are down compared to income.

No, it won't.

but these articles are only being published right now because of current political environment

^^^

I quake at this ad from the future:

News Flash from 2043: UnitedDeltaVirgin announces the introduction of Economy Wing class. Passengers will enjoy the luxury of their own sleeping bag and oxygen mask while experiencing panoramic views during flight, courtesy of being bungee-corded to the wing by trained flight attendants just prior to take-off. Occasional bird strikes will provide in-flight meals during take-off and landing, and passengers are assured there will be no queues for the toilet facilities (as there are none, except of course the inside of the aforementioned sleeping bag). Fares are wonderfully cheap(ish...) of course.

Current political environment, my foot.

The gap, between the front of the flying bus and the back of the flying bus, in service and service levels has been widening. Current political environment hasn't changed anything with regard to this.

For the vast majority of US passengers, it's now a case of pay more than before and get less than before -- excepting perhaps when in the front of the flying bus.

That doesn't -- it can't -- show what has happened to the average American household's portion of discretionary income available for leisure travel in the past twenty years and how such income's purchasing power applicable to air travel has dropped in the past 5, 10, 15, or 20 years.

It's amusing how some data misleads people into thinking something is more affordable in the US now than before, when the data is clear that it has become less affordable. But this is not surprising, as relying upon simplified silos of data doesn't educate anyone in the way more complex econometric analysis does.

The portion of air travel costs captured in fare pricing data has also been changing. Think about what that means for affordability too. ;)

Of course, the point more generally is that the disparity between rich and poor is increasing. The point with the airlines is that disparity between rich and middle class is increasing. It's not the poor who fly, it's the middle class and it's their relative income which is declining at a fast rate. The economy section of the plane is where they sit, and so the offering will decline in line with their income.

But, yes, it's clear that Premium Economy will become more and more relevant for the top end of the middle class scale.

Quite. Not everything is about America.

Also not included in the analysis is the fact that more companies require their employees who travel to do so at the cheapest no refundable fares. Business class fares were developed and marketed based on the idea that companies had deep pockets and would pay more, and that's no longer true. My point being that the statistic of people voting with their wallets is not entirely true for business travelers. There is an extra variable in that equation that people are ignoring.

"Meanwhile, business class keeps on getting comfier." This is certainly true for the long haul flights mentioned at the end of the article, but for domestic (non-transcon) first class, things are declining there as well.

Except the stats show the prices have been cut in half in constant dollar terms.

So rather than making up stats, show some.

The statement that travel is less affordable seems to defy the fact that more and more people are flying. If it was less affordable, fewer people could afford to fly.

What prices, published ticketed fares? They have been cut in half in constant dollar terms between which periods of time? They certainly haven't done that in the most recent one-year, three-year, or five-year period.s Has that taken place in the most recent ten-year period? No. In the most recent fifteen-year period? ;)


It has nothing to do with making up stats; it has to do with letting people go fish for themselves if they so wish to challenge their own political prejudices in support of the industry. ;)

I'm not here to spoon-feed adults on demand or to be a tutor for those incapable and/or unwilling to try to work on analysis of this too. Numerical literacy matters, and I encourage it by not babying adults.

I find it cute when people rely upon "Airlines for America", as that is an industry lobby group which would be more accurately described as "Airlines Against America" since it is so very customer-unfriedly and wants to keep peddling a story about airline affordability to try to justify their customer-unfriendly positions. They are the purveyors of that chart in your link. ;)

Less affordable in some markets has taken place while becoming more affordable in other markets. Don't confuse the US for the rest of the world. ;)

When the world's population has grown by a few billion in our lifetime and when relative wealth has increased in much of the non-OECD world where low cost carriers have increasingly become the norm, THEN divergence in affordability between different markets and a large growth in the absolute number of people flying shouldn't be a surprise. But that doesn't say anything about what has happened in the US to affordability of air travel for the average American household.

Go back to the link on my previous post.

In other words, you have nothing to back up what you said. So the only stats published are the several links I provided. Unless you have something more authoritative, they stand. Don't you agree?

The air traffic is USA is increasing over the last years:

Year. United States
2009 679,423,408
2010 720,497,000
2011 730,796,000
2012 736,699,000
2013 743,096,000


http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR

even though the total numbers are still increasing, both the year-to-year increases and percentage of increase are slowing

get 25 economists or statisticians or analysts in a room (or on a FT thread) and you will get at least 50 reasons as to what story the raw data actually tell

But are still increasing ;)

More than the USA population growing rate. ^

The frequency of air travel by a unique person is not in that item. That a rich subset of the American population can take multiple more trips annually than the average American household masks how air travel has become less affordable for the average American household even as the wealthiest amongst us take more flights than a decade or two ago. This just goes back to the notion of the gap between the richest of us and the rest of the country is rather wide and wider than it used to be at some prior points in time.

The fact is that silo data doesn't paint a meaningful picture in the way that more complex analysis of silo-crossing data does.

The difference in ability to understand comes down to who wants to be and needs to be spoon-fed and who doesn't need to be spoon-fed data to figure this out on their own instead of relying upon a silo metric or two that masks what it doesn't track.

Strictly speaking, the distance between the front and back of the plane will depend on the make and model of the aircraft...


I have to say again, air tickets are cheaper than they've ever been as an absolute. Whether American families can afford said tickets or not isn't relevant as strictly speaking, really poor families don't fly on airplanes anyway. You're comparing middle class and "rich" and I put those in quotation marks because there are so many folks willing to shell out for premium tickets or are flying on awards that it's not as exclusive as it used to be. I would also point out that "Business" class tickets have been getting proportionately cheaper over the years and yet the level of service has gone to the point where it rivals First class 20 years ago. Air travel has gotten cheaper than ever, not the other way around. Whether Americans can afford to fly up front or not is irrelevant.