Inequality has gotten so much worse that rich people don't even fly in the same planes as us anymore.
That's going to have perverse incentives on airplane safety too. They have no reason to update their laws if peasant airplane doors falling off becomes common.
I have a friend that is a sales manager for private planes. He said business exploded during the pandemic and then never slowed down. This despite flights being eye-wateringly expensive (like, 20k for one-way is a great deal, because you managed to book an empty leg.)
You think airlines don't make money on economy class? That's the vast majority of their income. Of course they're going to serve their largest customer base.
No. I was on a plane with Mitt Romney while he was running for president. He flew with everyone else. The idea of private jets is absolutely us coming to needing to sell something better and private for the wealthy which means more waste and less attention, and wirse conditions.
There are considerable safety concerns regarding private jets, mostly down to the quality of the pilots. At the bigger airlines, pilots are unionized and have consistent schedules they work and routes and aircraft they fly. It’s reliable work and where most pilots (even military) end up.
Meanwhile private aviation needs to be flexible and easy to set up. Contrary to your comment this is the sector that you can usually expect to find more unscrupulous operations and pilots who are basically just Some Guy. Most of the near miss accidents lately have involved private planes (though that can often be attributed to problems in the ATC network).
As for the doors that’s more of a Boeing specific problem, they’ve made a lot of questionable business decisions in recent years and this is the fallout of that. Airbus planes don’t seem to have this problem, and customers seem to be making it clear that they would like their planes to work thank you very much.
More like a supply and demand issue I would think, the issue here being there is no demand for first class seating so they are limiting the amount of "supply" of those seats to accommodate for less demand. Some airlines don't offer first class seating at all, like Southwest.
If you have 40 first class seats instead of 60 regular seats, why would you drop the price of the first class if you could make more with the 60 regular seats.
This isn't true at all... My wife and I fly first class and are no where near being able to afford flying private 🤣 the no babies part would be fantastic though.
I don't really care about airlines, but AA is the only airliner that flies out of the local regional airport (only flies to a bigger airport a few hours away), and I've never had any issues with them.
The worst I've had was having to listen to a flight attendent talk about God because I was on the last row.
We usually fly AA on flights to Europe. We live near KC, so our choices are AA or United (IIRC). And we prefer AA’s time schedule. Outside of major cities there is little choice to many destinations.
I’ve flown on AA’s international business and first class. The difference is negligible in terms of the seats and most people in them were complimentary upgrades since they couldn’t fill the seats.
The bigger differences were on the ground with the dining and check in. So all AA is doing is creating a “Business Plus” category that gets you the first class amenities on the ground and then a business class seat. This lets them put more business class seats on the plane and open things up to a bigger revenue stream.
AA first has been a joke for a long time. It was an ever so slightly better seat and they served one extra course - a soup - but was otherwise identical to business class service. You can’t charge thousands more for soup.
First class has been dying for years - and the only airlines that will do it, it’s really a prestige thing more than a profit center.
AA is the last United States based airline to even have one. This move is an industry-wide trend now that lie-flat business class seats are standard. Business class has gotten much nicer in the past 10 years and taken away the customers that previously would have flown in first.
I'd rather fly Qatar qsuites or many other si-enclosed business class seats than the first class ones remaining on European airlines like British Airways, Lufthansa, of air France. And doing so is a fraction of the price.
I need to fly from NJ to California in a few months. Economy tickets are around $275. I'd like a bit of extra legroom for the long flight, so I check out Economy plus. Economy plus tickets are $800. What in the actual fuck is this? It's not first class. I get no added benefits other than a few inches of extra leg room.
Buy 2 seats, 1 behind the other, for $550 then walk in there with a toolbox and yeet that seat out through the emergency door onto the tarmac. You get more than a few inches and it only cost twice as much.
Lots of companies are willing to pay for international business class, but not first class. So airlines have responded by making business class nicer and nicer. That, in turn, has made former first class passengers just buy business class because it’s almost as good for cheaper. So people are not buying first class tickets, so might as well eliminate them and add more business.
Worth noting that domestic first class (which is what they show) is a totally different thing.
I'm guessing that's because the international flights that Americans use instead are from other countries that does not have first class areas, in that everyone gets the same seating and leg space.
Such a disgusting socialist ploy. The CIA should coup the pilot and copilot and divvy up the plane in "desirables" and "undesirables", to then pin them against each other.
They're right. Few buy First Class tickets because the uptick in comfort and service from Business Class is tiny for the increase in cost. I fly Business but would never pony up for First.