High barrier to entry, consolidation, and collusion. Look at how many airline mergers have happened over the past decades.

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sershe 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That wouldn't explain why the reverse happened. Everyone introduced the crappier economy tier; even the airlines initially saying they wouldn't eventually caved and now there's a crappy economy tier default. Moreover, gradually these crappy tiers converged, including some (united iirc) getting slightly less crappy following user demand.

Most people want cheaper tickets and don't shop on quality. In the rare cases that they do airlines readily adjust. But the airlines trying to offer quality as the default would go out of business

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matthewdgreen 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Price aggregators like Google Flights continue to show the crappy tier by default, which means that airlines have to offer that tier to appear competitive. No idea why Google wants to build its product this way, but there are only a few companies in this business.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		One of the fundamental truths of American aviation is a significant fraction of fliers will buy the cheapest ticket every time. They’ll bitch about it. But if you cut some leg room and a few dollars off your tag, you’ll swing them from another. Basic economy doesn’t exist because of Google Flights. It exists because it sells. Well enough that it sustained entire discount airline fleets until the majors copied their model.

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Ajedi32 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wouldn't it make sense for regulators to focus on those problems then, rather than on setting arbitrary industry-wide limits on what level of service consumers are allowed to buy?