"Selling you pain"

Kristin Wong, writing for the Gawker remnant Lifehacker, has an excellent piece up on the economics of air travel.

I like the way Skift puts it: airlines are selling you pain. They make your experience as uncomfortable as possible so you’ll pay more.

by increasing the density of the Economy cabin, airlines “can boost capacity without adding to the fleet. Of course, as they shrink the coach section they force many to pay more to be able to have an ounce of comfort.” This is a key element of the up-selling strategy employed by airlines today to boost revenues, shored up by unbundled pricing strategies which offer to sell the pain away.

And with some of the carriers, you can’t even buy relief. Spirit is the worst airline for on-time arrivals, for example; only 73.8% of its flights arrive on time. You can’t pay extra to ensure they’re prompt. And when my friend and I were yelled at by WOW gate agents, we were afraid to even approach the desk to ask what our options were. We laughed about it later, but there wasn’t a fee we could pay to not get reprimanded like children. In other words, you can’t buy your way to better overall service.