Did you read my last response LondonElite? I've already said I am prepared to pay more for '70s style economy service'. The problem is that it is hard to even do that on some routes. Here is what I USED to be able to book.

London, Ontario, Canada - Toronto - Edinburgh. A short hop from the first regional airport to YYZ and then direct to EDI. The only way I can book that now is either with an LCC from Toronto (including Air Canada Rouge) or if I want to use a mainline carrier, I have to add connections in London, England, Dublin, Amsterdam, etc. Air Canada used to fly direct from Toronto to Edinburgh or Glasgow. Now they have handed that route over to Rouge. If you look at reviews for Rouge, you will have a very hard time finding any positive comments.
Air Canada rouge Customer Reviews | SKYTRAX

So for my upcoming flight I have had to book London(YXU)- Toronto (YYZ) - London (LHR) - Edinburgh (EDI) and return. Premium Economy is not available on the first or last leg, only on the transatlantic leg and I have booked that. So how do you suggest I get '70s economy service' when it isn't available on 2 counts, direct flights and PE seating on 2 legs? The fare as booked is $4760 for 2 people. It isn't just about being willing to pay obviously.

Now tell me what it is you don't understand 'what all the moaning is about'.

Look, you live in Canada and I grew up there in the 70s and 80s, so I'll assume we both know what travel in the 'olden days' was like. Air Canada was a Crown Corporation losing money hand over fist, in part because it was mandated to serve northern and other isolated communities at great expense with capped revenues. If you want to maintain a model like that, fine, as long as you can get the taxpayer on board. On an individual country level that might work, but in the context of the global market you don't stand a chance. Canada is, I will admit, a unique aviation market given its population concentration in five or six markets, spread across a huge area, with the rest of the country sparsely populated but reliant on fly-in, fly-out services.

But to your specific issue, PE is available on the only segment that matters (YYZ-LHR). Unless you live significantly west of London, I'd even drive to Toronto to fly from there. The EDI flight is about 50 minutes.

Without turning this into a case study, I get what you are saying. Y used to be a lot better than it is now. I agree. But it has also gotten ridiculously cheap, and you have far more options than you ever had before. C and F have massively improved all around (I remember flying on LH C class YUL-FRA in the early 1980s and it was not nearly as nice as LH PE is now). I think you need to accept the new realities. ;)

London (ON) to YYZ is like a 2 hour drive. This is an entirely silly straw man.

There are lots of ways to get from Toronto to Scotland in the relative comfort of a PE seat or the greater comfort of a J seat at price points that are better in real terms than regular Y or J were in the 1970s. The only difference now is that you have a new super-cheap, uncomfortable option in the back of the bus that didn't exist before. I've flown a lot of long-haul F and I've flown a lot of deep-discount last-minute $400-R/T-to-Europe Y (that I didn't or couldn't upgrade). I'm glad both exist.

I'm in stunned disbelief that an adult believes the government creates level playing fields. They literally do nothing except create corporate monopolies. Anyone who wants the government to enact regulation over the private sector should be forced to drink a gallon of bleach.

Well, governments also build airports, create safety standards, build common ATC networks, and negotiate with other governments to ensure safe international travel. Without government regulation, we probably would not have an aviation sector at all (or it would be a very small one), as Pan Am or whoever would have been just as likely to build their own worldwide network as Ford would have been able to build all of the U.S. Interstates. If we want to live in an advanced civilization with a modern transportation network, then there has to be a public-private partnership. If you want no government regulation, then Somalia is probably the best current real-world example of that, as there are parts of that country where no such regulation exists at all.

If you were talking about state-owned airlines, they aren't the ones developing the service offering that this thread considers the "race to the bottom". That's privately-held ULCCs doing that, and I'm okay with it. (Still well-regulated, of course.)

I'm in stunned disbelief some people expect a direct, trans-oceanic flight of 8000km, from a city of 400,000 to a city of 500,000, and that flight must be offered with multi-class services, particularly a partial-class service.

Well, I'm not in disbelief, stunned or otherwise about anything regarding air travel. But let's not forgot folks that my OP was about the 'race to the bottom'. Regardless of what exists today vs. in the past and at what prices in real dollars etc. Nothing anyone has said has actually shown that there is not a 'race to the bottom' and I think any thinking person will have to agree that there is a 'race to the bottom'.

The people get what the people deserve and in asking for lower prices above all else, they have to put up with a lousy product in return. Consider air travel in comparison to other products. Generally speaking, products get better over time. It is reasonable to argue that Business and First have got better where they exist but Economy has certainly not. Would you consider it a good thing if say automobiles at the bottom end of the market had got worse in whatever way than they were in the past? There is no point in saying you can have a Mercedes or Ferrari or whatever if you are willing to pay for it and at the same time ignore the bulk of the market. I bought a brand new 1971 Ford Mustang for $3100. Today, a new Mustang is $30K CAD for a more or less base model to $45k for a GT to $80K for a Shelby based model. Those prices all make sense to me. But the base model at $30k is far superior in every way to the 1971 Mustang I bought for $3100. The product has improved in all variants. That is not true of air travel. The funny thing is that in that comparison, average people willingly go into debt to buy a car they actually cannot afford in reality. Yet when it comes to air travel, all that matters to them is cheap. I guess what that tells us is that the automobile manufacturers are better at marketing than the airlines.

Compare brakes, tires, ride comfort, safety features, amenities, etc. of a car to the equivalent in air travel. Seat width and pitch have not only been reduced in Economy, the amenities that used to be included now have to all be paid for separately. Pillows, blankets, meals, drinks, etc.

Even when booking PE for the sample trip I have used, you have to pay extra for seat selection after you have gone through booking the flights. Or join the scramble for free selection when the 24 hour online booking window opens up. Nor does booking PE work for all flights when you are adding in 2 regional flights (YXU-YYZ and LHR-EDI) as I am. Those flights have no PE seating, only Economy. Whether you are willing to pay more or not is irrelevant if no such seating is available, you have to accept Economy width and pitch seating.

Regarding specific comments about those regional flights. Yes, I could drive to Toronto in 2 hours. So what? It is far more convenient to drive to my local regional airport, park for $10 a day, stroll the 2 minutes into the departure area and spend 5 minutes checking-in and another 5 minutes tops going through security. Why would I want to drive to Toronto? I can afford not to. When I travel, my top criteria are comfort and convenience, not price. Driving to Toronto is for those who cannot afford to fly. Why not suggest I take a bus from London to Edinburgh? It's cheaper after all.

The bottom line is simple, the airlines at the insistence of the consumer demand, are in a race to the bottom. I don't think anyone can really deny that.

Your comparison with the car industry is flawed. Apart from some technological advances, the quality of my 1986 Mercedes is much higher than my 2015 version. Back then quality was important. Now supply chain efficiency and the need for a complete replacement after seven years drive the thinking.

Deniah, what I want is a direct flight from Toronto to Edinburgh, not from London, Ontario which you seem to be suggesting. Those flights on mainline carriers existed in the past but no longer do. What I also want is a comfortable seat on a regional flight. Those existed in the past but no longer do. I do not need 'multi-class' or 'partial'-class' as you put it, I only need 2 classes. A comfortable Economy (as existed) and First if you can afford it.

I would direct you to my comments above regarding automobiles. Would you say you would have no issue with cars becoming inferior in meaningful ways for the mass market, as long as on some trips, you could drive a Mercedes, Ferrari, etc. and would accept those trips on which they weren't available and you had to drive a vehicle that was inferior to a 1971 vehicle? If I were in 'stunned disbelief' about anything it would be someone saying they were OK with that scenario.

I don't want a return to 70s style service. I want a return to 2010 service, with a minimum of an 18-inch seat and 32 inches of pitch on long-haul flight. That means no more 10-across on the 777 and making the 787 8- instead of 9-across. And yes, I view it as the role of government to set a base standard below which the airlines just cannot go.

I'm sure you're aware of the history of aviation in the US, but just to reiterate, the reason air travel was so much better quality in the 70s was because the government essentially mandated it. Prices for each route were set by the Civil Aeronautics Board, at levels higher than what the market would dictate. As you probably remember from economics class, a price floor results in a surplus and therefore a better quality product. The airlines could not legally compete on price, so they had to compete on service. In other words, the superior quality of economy class in the past was artificially created by government regulations. After the Deregulation Act was passed and the price floor removed, the airlines slowly started to adjust to the new reality by moving prices and quantity toward the demand/supply equilibrium, in a process that took many years and in some ways is still ongoing. You can call this the race to the bottom, I call it the race to meet the demand of customers.

Indeed. The expression 'race to the bottom' is a bit meaningless.

Fine, I'll bite. I don't believe there's a race to the bottom: I believe it's a race to meet market demand (to borrow from cbn42's post).

There are multiple vectors of quality.

Aviation safety is better than it's ever been - clearly quality in the sense of airframe, engine, and pilot performance things are better than they ever have been due to better technology, training, design, etc.

Premium-cabin offerings are better than they've ever been. Nobody had first-class suites in the 1970s. Modern lounge networks for long-haul F pax are better than ever (for the nonsmoker, anyway). In the J cabin, a lie-flat seat has become basic table stakes for any serious airline. For a positive development since 2010, airlines are now *selling* more of these J seats at sensible price points, not holding them back solely for the largest corporations on 50% contract discounts.

For the deep-discount traveler - the college student or young adult who 30 years ago simply didn't travel far - there are tons of destinations within reach that he/she never could have remotely considered in the past. ULCC proliferation has crossed Europe and Asia and puts practically the entire developed world within reach of a budget traveler. My first trip to Italy cost $580 R/T in 1977 dollars. My next one is this April for $450 R/T in 2017 dollars. That's a pretty nice improvement, regardless of how good I thought airline food was in 1977. (Remember, we almost universally hated it. Stand-up comics everywhere had material about airline food.)

So none of these is really a race to the bottom - all are a race to provide more and better product. The one negative difference (to us, as Flyertalkers) is that airlines are also figuring out how to do a lot of this with much less reliance on loyalty programs. I do believe those were at their "best" (for us) a generation or so ago. Now airlines have better business intelligence data/algorithms overall, and that has allowed them to steadily walk back the overall emphasis and benefits of the programs.

I don't disagree with much of the last few comments and if the term 'race to the bottom' is replaced with 'race to meet market demand', I am fine with that as well.

That leaves me in disagreement with what the market is demanding, which comes down to one word, 'cheap'. Cheap prices result in a low quality product. I prefer a quality product but it seems I am in the minority these days in that regard. That leaves me wondering about the 'market's' intelligence.

If you prefer a quality product, then you're in luck: airlines all over the world are trying to innovate new premium seats, features, menus, lounge concepts, etc. If you're interested in quality, then the person sitting 30 rows behind you who is only interested in accessible mass transportation should not affect you.

AC (which sounds like your home airline?) actually does a pretty nice job with their J product, IMHO. I know there are a few posters on FT who insist that anything below EK F is complete crap, but the vast majority of the quality-sensitive market likes a lot of offerings being rolled out by many airlines.

when you bought your original ford mustang, your chances of encountering an aviation accident was 10x higher than it is today.
https://aviation-safety.net/graphics...-1977-2017.jpg

that's a significant improvement, even if the catering isnt quite up to your standard today.

This. I take into consideration the alternatives I would be offered if the flight were rescheduled (because of low load factors or whatever.)

My breaking point would be washrooms. It's one thing to cram oneself into a tiny seat, and another to queue longer than a minute or two for the loo.

I think the price sensitivities are undeniable, but it's easy to forget that they're against a backdrop of deepening inequality where the middle class has shrunk and more people have fallen down than risen up. Back in 1970 you had a stronger middle class and a much higher percentage of income was discretionary, even though TVs and airfares and a number of other things were much more expensive then in inflation-adjusted terms. The Faux News talking heads like to point out how certain things are so much cheaper now, but that's more than offset by other things like housing, education, health care and to a lesser extent transportation that haven't been on the same trajectory. The end result for many people (I'd say a majority) is that discretionary income is a much lower percentage of the total and may even be a negative number.

Let's also not forget what hasn't changed: airlines behaving oligopolistically and trying to compete on as few routes as possible and charging a lot on the not-so-competitive ones. If you look in the parking lots at ATL airport you'll see a lot of plates from bordering states and people from smaller cities that do have a bit of air service but still see enough gap to drive all the way to ATL to fly WN/F9/NK. I would bet they would pay $50-100 more to fly from CAE, SAV, AVL, or wherever and avoid the drive, but the gap is probably quite a bit more than that. Plus the thing in the paragraph above about the shrinking middle class.

On the east and west coasts housing has skyrocketed. In much of flyover America, not so much. In my home town a lot of houses are selling for around the same prices that they sold for in the late 1970s, and that's without adjusting for inflation. Tuition costs have skyrocketed, but in the 1970s merit aid was almost unheard of, while today it's common, with decent test scores qualifying for automatic full or partial tuition waivers at many schools.

As time goes by people spend differently, so it is really hard to say who is "better off."

The IRROPS thing would definitely lead me to book a major carrier, but it would not make me want to book that carrier's BE fare when it's barely lower than a regular fare.

I've never noticed different loo-queue times on different carriers. I guess it could be theoretically longer in a high-density configuration, but I don't pee enough on airplanes for this to be an issue.

Yep. One good reason that I would not be caught dead on a ULCC. Valu-Jet. Plus the baggage restrictions. People have all kinds of reasons for making the ticket decisions they do. Including what airlines do they actually have to choose from. If I want to go nonstop to Europe I pretty much have to take American from my city, Philadelphia. So it's not a straight price decision. Would I pay extra for some things? Yes, and I do. Do I always have the options? Nope.

Discretionary income is a lower percentage of the total income in “flyover America” too now than it was a few decades ago.

That the cost of dilapidated housing stock in some places and some consumer durable items are a lower proportion of median income doesn’t mean that discretionary income is a higher proportion of total income for the average household than it used to be; it’s not. And airfare costs for domestic travel as a percentage of disposable income are not now the lowest they’ve ever been; and even if they were, the governmental waivers and favors granted to the legacy majors and anti-competition mergers/acquisitions have made airfare costs more costly than they would be. Corporate-kiss-up elected officials, government bureaucrats, lobbyists, corporate-cheerleading ideologues and greedy “investors” have made this market what it is for consumers.

I just bought a very nice 2 bedroom, one bath house for $50,000. It's not dilapidated. In fact, it's very nice. That's flyover country for you.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a80544c2a6.jpg

What $50,000 buys in flyover America.

Nice house. Nice price.
But what's that old saying about real estate? The three most important things are location, location, and location.
​​​​​​That house would go for 10x your price on the West Coast. And it would sell, maybe even faster than it did where you live. Though it seems like you got an extraordinary deal, no matter what state.
^

LOL, I take it you haven't heard about this simpleflyer. Paying to Pee: Ryanair's New Flight Bathroom Fee. Have Airlines Gone Too Far? - ABC News

Charge to use the toilet and remove 2 of the 3 on board in order to squeeze 6 extra seats in.

But people still want to say there is no race to the bottom.

Looks like a cool house!! Now trim that tree and bushes... ;)

Been to Oxford exactly twice...cool town. Everybody should tailgate in The Grove at least once in their life. (Or...twice.)

Actually, it's that people won't pay extra for a better experience. They'll just put up with it.

This was just a media stunt by Ryanair to get press coverage and has been extensively debunked since then. What has been happening is that some toilets are getting smaller in Y and larger in J and F - in BA's latest refit of short-haul planes, along with sub-ULCC size seats, for example.

He never implemented it.

Didn’t think so.

No it wasn't. There was too much negative publicity generated so they backed down. But don't think for a minute they would not have implemented it if they could have quietly gotten away with it. The point is that it shows the thinking that is going on. 'How can we sell a seat for 19GBP and still make a profit? Add-on charges are the simple answer. OK, let's go with that. What else? Squeeze more people into a given space. OK, we'll go with that. Reduce the number of bathrooms. Yup, that will work too.' etc. etc.

I'm reminded of a situation years ago on a Greek island where I was living. In the mid 90s, the package tour companies were beating down the hotels for lower and lower prices. The problem was that an excess of rooms were available as it was not regulated by the Greek government and anyone and everyone was building a small hotel and offering their rooms to the tour companies. So the tour companies would approach a hotel and say, 'we will pay you $20 per double room per night. Take it or leave it. If you don't, the hotel next door will.'

As a result, the hotels couldn't make any profit on the room. So one bright young guy (I actually know who it was) at one hotel had a 'eureka moment' one day. Sun beds by the pool were available to guests. Why not charge $5 a day for a sunbed? After all, if you want a sunbed down on the beach, you have to pay for them there, why not at the hotel? OK, let's go with that.' So that hotel started charging for sun beds by the pool. Their accountant told them they were out of the 'red' and into the 'black' on the ledger. Before the end of that summer tourist season, almost every hotel was charging for the use of a sunbed by their pool.

The tourists were complaining like crazy about it and accusing the hotels of a 'rip-off'. But was it and where does any blame really lie? Is the hotel supposed to operate without making a profit? The tourists were getting what they asked for, a cheap package holiday. The tour companies were still making fat profits simply by paying the hotel a low price per room. The only ones losing were the hotels.

The hotels also started looking at ways to cut costs in the face of the low prices they were being paid for a room. As a result, the quality of their product was going downhill. A mattress is damaged, turn it over. Room furnishings are in poor shape, ignore it. A chair on a room balcony has a broken leg, remove it but don't replace it with another one. etc. etc.

The tourist's never stopped to ask themselves, 'why is this hotel going downhill and why are they trying to add on charges for anything and everything they can think of'. Two thin towels to a bathroom. Want another one, there will be a charge for that. And no, you cannot take those towels to the pool, there are towels for rent at the pool. If the tourists were to ask themselves, 'why is this happening?', and figured out that it was because the hotel needed to make a profit, the tourist would then have to say to themselves, 'well OK, we need to pay more for our package holiday so that the hotel can make a profit and not need to nickel and dime us for everything.' The race to the bottom driven by the customers obsession with a lower price above all else, is not confined to the airlines.

Everyone is very quick to blame the airline's for everything. Seat size, comfort, ammenities, etc. but never seem to ask 'why are they doing this?'

Why do you let the tail wag the dog?

If you don't like to pay to have a pee (by the way, I believe O'Leary himself admitted he was just having a laugh with this idea), don't fly Ryanair. If you don't want to stay in some crappy Greek pseudo-resort, stay at Elounda Mare.

I must say, I think you are driving at windmills.

This.

The fact that Ryanair exists and sh*tty hotels exist doesn't mean there's a "race to the bottom."

Other choices exist, and many of those choices are competing to innovate and differentiate on quality.

My last trip to India was on EK, upper deck of the A380, best inflight product I've ever had on that route in any era. And it was substantially cheaper in real terms than long-haul J was a decade ago. (I was only in J, not F. Sadly.)

Some airlines are rolling out better products. Others are trying to be as cheap as possible. Others are trying to look for intermediate combinations of price and quality that generate demand where there wasn't any before - things like Premium Economy or more simple extra-legroom seats.

I have complaints about anticompetitive airline behavior in some markets, but macro-level product innovation isn't really my complaint. If you think Norwegian sucks, there are other viable options. It's not a Hobson's choice.