Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups • Hacker News Board

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#531

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 8:13 AM UTC

davidrupp wrote: post #508

account42 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason or are you just generally a sadist? Overhead luggage is the only place you can take anything fragile. You have no control over how your checked baggage is handled and anything you have to take with you into the cramped seating space will get squished.

One reason that I would value is that it would speed up boarding and deplaning. As you correctly point out, the prevailing overhead luggage system provides a benefit to some travelers, potentially to the detriment of others. It's a tradeoff.

I seriously doubt it would make much difference for deplaning - people already stand in the isle with their luggage out of the compartment long before the doors open.

For boarding it might speed things up but often boarding is done before all checked luggage is loaded so it will probably not let you take off faster either.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#532

Post by smeej » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #510

smeej wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to end up sitting next to a stranger anyway if you're flying alone. Nobody says you have to become friends, but I wouldn't mind having in common with my seatmate that we're both the kind of people who don't take the standard option at face value.

If anything, booking together with a stranger would allow you to leave an empty seat between you which is less likely to be filled than if you leave two empty seats next to you. And the service could even be set up to give you some choice over the stranger (at the expense of less matches) like setting a maximum weight.

Any time I do select a seat in advance, I try to pick my window seat where someone already has the aisle one. It works surprisingly often to get an empty seat in the row!

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#533

Post by davidrupp » Wed, Jun 04, 2025, 12:43 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #531

davidrupp wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason that I would value is that it would speed up boarding and deplaning. As you correctly point out, the prevailing overhead luggage system provides a benefit to some travelers, potentially to the detriment of others. It's a tradeoff.

I seriously doubt it would make much difference for deplaning - people already stand in the isle with their luggage out of the compartment long before the doors open. For boarding it might speed things up but often boarding is done before all checked luggage is loaded so it will probably not let you take off faster either.

I agree that it wouldn't cause the doors to open any sooner for deplaning, but once they did, people could just ... leave. The people standing in the aisle with their luggage out of the compartment are the ones who started in the aisle seats. People in the other seats need to get out, reach up, pull down, get organized. Sometimes they have to salmon their way back from their actual seat to the compartment several rows behind them because that's where they had to stow their carry-on because the people seated in row 30 put their bag over row 16 when they boarded[1].

Similarly, for takeoff I agree that it wouldn't necessarily save time, net. But it would help with the frustration of standing in line, backed up on the jetway while everyone is struggling with setting up the initial conditions for the deplaning scenario I described above. At least people could get seated sooner and be comfortable for longer while they're waiting for takeoff.

[1] Based on a true story.