Why are airlines chasing the most price-sensitive customers instead of making everyone’s experience slightly less unpleasant and slightly more expensive? If you only have $392 to spend, you cannot afford to fly from London to DC, period. Tough shit. Stop racing to the bottom and making things miserable for the rest of us just because you’re willing to be treated like cattle.
I have a 30-40 hour series of flights (one-way) coming up this summer. I can’t afford business or first class, but neither can I tolerate the drop all the way down to economy for that length of time. Economy plus, IME, typically gives you an extra inch or two of legroom, an outlet for your laptop, and maybe a complimentary cocktail. Oh, and you get to board earlier so you can sit in your uncomfortable seat that much longer. For three times the price.
Normal airlines should leave the ultra-low-margin fares to hustlers like Ryanair and Spirit, and raise their own baseline of quality. I used to get excited about flying and now I dread it, and it’s not because I’m jaded — the experience really is a lot worse these days.
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Likewise though generally it’s being at the airport that’s more miserable for me than actually flying.
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The KLM flight was nice, had good food and all, i didn’t have a bad time in coach or business both trips to and from Sweden. But business wasn’t much of an improvement over coach, at least not for me, i would still be quite happy flying with them again.
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YES PLEASE! Especially if mine comes with Leeloo 
At the very least, yes, make “has upcoming flight” a legitimate reason that a doctor can bill your insurance for some kind of sedative / anti-anxiety medication. Make this standard, and have people test the drugs under supervision to see what will work best for them (to avoid any Ambien shenanigans…).
I flew non-stop to shanghai from NYC (15+ hrs), and was pretty shocked (naively, I know) to learn that, yes, they will put you in seat the same size as the one that takes you from NYC to California. I’m 6’1". I popped one of my wife’s Ambiens, and stared at the back of the head of the guy in front of my for 30 minutes, drifted in and out for 8 hours, then was awake for the length of a normal-length-meaning-just-barely-bearable flight. It also made my shy bladder (my nightmare going into the flight) run like a well-oiled machine.
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I think that’s the key to using credit cards - as long as you pay them off each month, then you’re golden. Once you get behind, you’re screwed. I like that people are able to employ them to their advantage sometimes, like this, though.
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Two points.
1.) The exact meaning of business class in terms of seat size varies a lot by airline and even route, which makes comparisons difficult. Business class can be closer to “coach plus” or what used to be called first class.
2.) It is indeed the case that many people riding further front-wise aren’t actually paying for it, rather they have used “points” or “miles” for an upgrade. So we can see that rather than maximizing the number of single class coach seats, the airlines have removed a few and added more premium seats than they’re likely to sell on the CHANCE that they will sell, and as a sort of “variable reinforcement” reward for frequent flyers at the next lower class.
ed to add Most people are simply not willing to pay significantly more to sit in a more comfortable seat for a few hours.
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