Jose wrote in
:

Ummmm... have you flown first class recently?

Ummm, yeah. NY to SF. Champaigne, china, crystal, metal (though not
silver) utensils including knives, a meal that would rival many
restaurants, cloth napkins, twice as much room as coach, maybe more,
attentive stewards and stewardesses, fresh baked chocolate chip
cookies.

Jose

That's not first class. That's Midwest Express. They're an exception. And
at Midwest Express the entire plane is single class and gets the same
frills.

I've had a few 1st class upgrades (although they seem to get harder and
harder to get these days). Not all of them served meals on a 2 hour
flight, and a couple of them didn't even have metalware (they blamed
9/11). I wouldn't say the food rivals restauarants, but you typically
get a meal as opposed to having to pay for a snack box or paper bag
lunch with a soggy turkey sandwich. Breakable glass and China, perhaps, but
not always. Quite honestly, I'm not sure what the big hoopla is. The most
significant benefit of course is that I can feel comfortable like the Pig I
am when in 1st class, as opposed to feeling squished like a Cattle in the
back. But that is worth something to me.

I had a long conversation with a stewardess on a Northwest flight a while
back. She said they have to compete with the "No-Frills" airlines
who are taking away their market share. I said they would be smarter to
segment the market and let the No-Frills airlines have the low-budget,
no-service, no-room customers, and segment the market so they keep the
mid-range and higher-range customers who would be willing to pay a small
premium for more room and better service. I told her that basically her
airline, by choosing to compete directly against the no-frills airline is
quickly becoming a no-frills airline, and will surely declare bankruptcy.
In the meantime, they have twice as many seats on the plane than they did a
few years ago, and most of them are empty. If they halved the number of
seats on the plane, and charged 50% more, they would be able to include the
same size crew complement, probably fill a few more seats than they had
that day, but earn substantially more money.

The airlines all seem to think the only way to compete is on price. I
can't really complain too much, since I'm benefitting from their poor
marketing skills. But the fact is that there are many ways to compete,
and most of the airlines are just plain missing the boat (excuse the
pun).