Airline travel in coach continues to be difficult for the business user who would like to be productive. On this trip the man across the aisle has a lovely little netbook. Much smaller than my laptop which is admittedly gargantuan with its beautiful big screen.
But he’s twisted around sideways in his seat anyway. Apparently he’d like be able to do something useful with it – and he doesn’t have enough room, even with what looks like a toy, to do so. As for me, I’m going to write this blog post on my iPhone just to prove I can, and post it using the wonderful GoGo network inflight Internet service.
And that gives me puase. I was willing to pay for internet service; for six bucks it was worth it. Would I pay for legroom? Yes. So with airlines monetizing everything else, maybe it’s time to think about that idea again. Take two rows of seat out and increase space for – what, 6? 8? Charge a few bucks more. I’d pay. Would you? $25? $50?
United wanted $39 to upgrade to the Premier Economy seats (5″ more) for my flight on Friday (2 hour). I was thinking along the same lines that you seem to be going. Why not remove a few rows and spread the revenue out to the rest of the rows, instead of making so many suffer?
Just a real “business class” with room to work is all I ask.
United charged me $43 on Friday for Premier Economy. JetBlue chared $20 the week before for more leg-room.
JetBlue reserves a row next to the emergency exits for extra cash ($25 I think). You can actually cross your legs in there which is really nice. Of course, you cant get an internet connection on most US flights as best I can tell so from a working standpoint, makes it fairly useless to me. From a comfort standpoint, it’s well worth it. But then again even regular seats on JetBlue are vastly superior to cattle class on most US airlines especially American. I dont think American would even be allowed to operate in Europe the way it has become.
JetBlue charged $40 for West->East coast one way flight.
@Ryan. Caveat emptor 🙂
AirTran offered business class on its SFO to ATL run for $99 dollars. They had a promo for “Air WiFi” but it was s-l-o-w. With just over an hour left in the flight I tried to download a 12MB file. Never made it.
American uses GoGo (I’ve posted about them.) I found their service so fast I was able to videoconference with Skype (voice off – that would be offensive!)