Economy passengers may rage after being marched through first class

[Lydia Leftcoast]

88. I do not buy on price alone

I check Seat Guru.com, which lets you input your proposed flight and see a diagram of the aircraft you would be flying on. 32" seat pitch is my absolute bottom limit.

Some of those budget airlines offering cheap trips to Europe have only 29-30". There is no ticket cheap enough to make me fly in those conditions. I had 29" seat pitch once on a domestic flight in China. My nose was almost in the hair of the person in front of me.

For years, I flew United, because of their Economy Plus option: same narrow seat, same crappy food, same inadequate in-flight entertainment, same bored flight attendants, but 3" more leg room, which makes a lot of difference at my height.

ANA (All Nippon Airways) used to be my airline of choice for flights to Japan, but then I learned that after four or five years of 34" seat pitch (and attentive Japanese customer service) they were returning to their previous practice of narrower seats with less leg room.

At the same time, Japan Airlines is improving its seating, so I think I will pony up the extra money to fly with them from now on.

There are a lot of naive flyers who think they've scored a great deal because Airline A is $50 cheaper than Airline B. In a sense, they have a point. Why pay more for the same awful experience? But by always going for the cheapest seat, you are encouraging the airlines in their belief that we peasants don't care about comfort. If $50 per person is going to break you, then you really can't afford to make the trip at all.

The most irksome thing about the first class-coach class division is that the price differential is so huge.

In 2007, I priced flights to England, and just for fun, I priced all the different classes. Coach was about $1000 roundtrip. But business class was $7,000, and first class was a whopping $12,000. Don't tell me that business class is 7 times better than coach. I received an at-the-airport upgrade on my last trip to Japan and Korea. Business class was nice, but not 7 times as nice as coach. Maybe 3 times as nice.

The excuse that the airlines give is that they have to price their luxury services that way because so many people upgrade with miles. Ahem, who came up with frequent flyer miles anyway, and who foolishly made it possible to earn them in so many ways (shopping online at normal online retailers through the airline's portal???) that passengers collectively now have more miles than the airlines can possibly redeem in this century? (That's why they've been downgrading the value of miles and making it harder and harder to qualify for awards.)

By the way, as a resident of Minneapolis, I have switched my domestic travel to a local so-called low-cost carrier, Sun Country. Its coach service is exactly the same as Delta or United (free non-alcoholic drinks, food for purchase, six seats across), but their first class, which costs about twice as much as coach, is a real first class with comfy chairs, free alcohol, and a real meal. No TV screen, but I just load my iPad with books, games, and movies, so it's no loss. If you are flying Sun Country and see an offer for a paid upgrade (most are $119 domestically), take it.