As for whether there are any full service airlines left . . . well, it all depends upon your definition. There are airlines that can provide everything a full service airline would provide but you just have to pay for it a la carte. Continental still gives you a free meal in coach, so that might be as close as you get. Or Southwest, of course, with their no fee strategy. I’ve long thought that at least one airline should be trying to move more upscale here – and that airline should be United. But they haven’t seen it that way.

Selling individual seats on an airplane is a good idea with really only one problem – what about when there’s a change in the aircraft type? An airline like United would have a really tough time with this because they have multiple configurations on a single aircraft type. So it might not be very reliable if you purchased an actual seat, because it may not exist on that aircraft by the time your flight goes. But the idea is a good one, and some airlines have moved that way by charging a premium for the best seats onboard.

As always a very thought provoking piece. I don’t see fees continuing to go up like most people predict. Quite a lot of the fees now are for stuff that was being unnecessarily thrown in for free in the past, do you really need a beer on your one hour flight? However I don’t think that the traveling public are stupid and theres a point where these newer, more ridiculous fees, will all add up and people will start to move away. The only problem i see in the US is that all airlines seem to be doing it, correct me if i’m wrong but do you have any full service airlines left? Also the meta search and aggregators are starting to include fee data, as per you’re post about TripAdvisor the other day. When the majority of searches include fees, the airlines can’t get away with adding everything on after you’ve bought the ticket. I think we’ll start to see fees coming down and being rolled back into the base fare.

I have a theory about ticketing and i’m interested to know if you think it would work. Except for the technical issues of implementing it whats to stop airlines selling individual seats on a plane? For example I go to an airlines website to buy a ticket after I’ve selected my flights it brings up a real time seatmap of the plane and shows the different prices for different seats. Rock bottom fares for middle seats at the back, increasing the further towards the front you get. Aisle and window seats cost more, and exit row a premium. I was just thinking of different ways to fly transatlantic with a low cost model. Most things i hear focus on reducing food and drinks and increased fees. However I can live without the freebies but the one thing I would genuinely pay more for is a particular type of seat. Do you think it could work?

Maybe it’s time for Washington to start setting the minimum fares that make sense and then let the airlines add to that if they need to.

I think much of what we’re seeing here is simply the response to consumer behavior. If they advertise a $99 fare, you get drawn in, and you still buy it even if the price doubles when you tack on all the extras. But if you advertise a $198 fare or, even worse, a $200 fare, people won’t be as attracted to start the process. The only way to get airlines to stop this is, of course, to have the government regulate it. That’s happened to some extent, but they continue to find workarounds.