
Why your airline seat may shrink even more under new regulations - cmurf
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-your-airline-seat-may-shrink-even-more-under-new-regulations-2018-09-24
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ggm
So they show a table confirming only two out of about eight airlines have a
28" pitch, and yet they argue the legal minima will become 28. Guys.. its not
that hard: force the two dogs to come up to scale, set the minimum at 31" or
32" and then give some cost support to migrate.

PS Airlines re-configure seating when it suits them. The "it costs too much to
move them" argument feels pretty tragically bogus. Somebody lobbied to hard,
if thats being believed.

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justtopost
Except it was noted that anything 27" or more is 'safe'. While they could
easily force a few to make them 30", there is no legal reason to do so, even
when it is clearly the right thing to do here.

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ggm
Oh I have no doubt we won't get regulation for public good: we'll get
regulation for minimum cost/lawsuit outcome.

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mrob
>“It would have been nice if they did this in 1985,” Elliott said. “If the
government does what I think it’s going to do, this is going to give airlines
a license to reduce space even more. I don’t see the consumer benefit.”

The obvious consumer benefit is cheaper flights. Smaller seats mean lower
costs, and competition should force airlines to pass the savings on to
consumers. If they're colluding to keep the savings to themselves, that's a
failure of anti-trust law, not a failure of seat size law. I don't see why the
government should force people to pay extra for luxury.

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bausshf
Don't be too optimistic about "smaller seats meaning lower costs" because it
might not.

Cereal packages has gotten smaller, but the prices for cereal hasn't gone
down.

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jdpedrie
That's a bad comparison. Generally, shrinking the size of a packaged good is a
way to compensate for inflation without sticker shock, a huge problem in a
very price-sensitive market like groceries. The chief the government measures
inflation, in fact, is the Consumer Price Index, which measures the cost of a
"basket" of consumer goods. [0]

The cost of flying, on the other hand, has fallen dramatically since
deregulation. [1]

[0] [https://www.bls.gov/CPI/](https://www.bls.gov/CPI/) [1]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-
air...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-
ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/)

