Growing up in the south, in many ways is like growing up inside of a time capsule. Working my first few real jobs out of college, customer service and business practices in general defiantly had a remnant of the 1950s. A time when a face-to-face meeting was preferred over a phone call or a phone call was preferred over an email. More importantly, the ROI on customer service was just assumed and not measured at every decision relating to.

An example of how far we’ve come since the days of included customer service lies within the air travel industry. During the 50s it was considered a privilege to travel via the airplane. Subsequently airline staff treated their customers in a congratulatory manner. Versus today’s staff where you’re lucky to get a simple greeting when checking in.

Let alone customers feeling as though they have to coddle airline staff for basic pleasantries the booking process in itself has become a shell game of hidden prices and fees. Sitting on the flight where I write this the advertised price of the flight was around $650, by the time I reached check-out the total came in around $890. Thinking back to my first job in a water sports pro shop, if a water ski had a price tag of $250 but the total came up to $430 at check-out I wouldn’t have sold any water skis. Adversely, I grew my customer base by advertising $260 and taking $10 off for just being a customer I liked.

When booking this ticket I was introduced to what is now called basic economy, which is the new advertised price. If you’re not familiar with basic economy a simple explanation is the airlines have now priced middle seats at a lower price and striped away the ability to choose a seat when booking your ticket. Prior to basic economy a flyer could book at the advertised price then pick a desirable seat, like a window or aisle. Basic economy’s price only includes a middle seat. To take a window or aisle is going to cost you. In the case of this flight, the price was $190 for an aisle or window per flight leg. Bulkhead and emergency row seats came in at $280 a leg!

A frequent traveler, like myself, would assume book the basic economy and ask for a seat change at the gate, or worse case scenario hope there is an open seat in flight and relocate. Once I arrived at the gate I got lucky and got a cheery, happy to have a job gate agent to make my seat request to. She took a deep breath, stopped what she was doing and changed computers to then quote me the same prices I saw online that same morning. Simply put, the airline closed this loophole before implementing basic economy fares. Therefore the first 16 hour leg of this trip was spent in seat 28E. On a 777 that is the middle of the middle, four people to my left, and four people to my right.

We’ve now reached a point where airlines are going out of their way to avoid customer service or any kind of included value. The return trip to New York wasn’t a full flight. I know this because before checking in I checked available upgrades, which is to the new higher tier of economy, to which there were several options in my same cabin. About 3 hours in I noticed a few passengers were sitting in middle seats in an otherwise empty row. When walking the aisles, I noticed the empty seats had the seat cushions removed to prevent any passengers from spreading out or relocating. I was completely flabbergasted. The airline had rather fly an empty seat than to allow a passenger to move. I found the flight attendant to play dumb and ask if there was something wrong. She took the bait that I wasn’t privy to their game and answered my question with a stock airline policy excuse. When I asked her to confirm that there wasn’t any reason, other than money, for passengers to move she huffed at me and asked me if there was anything she could help me with. When I asked to be moved to a bulkhead seat she declined and told me to return to 29A.

To check the path of how travelers are now a group of customers that have allowed an industry to runaway with the once frowned upon act of nickel and diming, it’s import to look back on a significant change that got us here. In 2007 US Airways began charging for checked bags. They did this in order to appear higher in the search results in the rise of booking sites like Expedia and Kayak. They could lower their prices by $5 across the board to appear cheaper, but make up ground, and then some, with a $20 checked bag fee. The customers took the lower ticket price, hook line and sinker. In 2007 US Airways stock prices grew at rate faster than other carriers stock prices fell. At a time during the 1980s, Robert Crandall, then head of American Airlines crunched some numbers and found that if they removed a single olive from the inflight salad the airline would save $100,000. Its quite possible that no one would notice, but isn't that the equivalent slightly turning up the heat on the frog in the pot of water?*

One way to unwind the deterioration of the quality of air travel is a coordinated revolt by all flyers. If every flyer began booking basic economy the airlines would be forced to put flyers in economy seats. Thus causing a significant change to current revenue forecasting. Additionally, if every single basic economy flyer asked a gate agent to check open seats for upgrades to then turn them down flights would begin departing late. The ripple effect of these acts could be enough to force the airlines hand in putting back in some of the value in flying. More than likely though we’re all just going to have to accept the fact to retain some of the past quality in our flights we’re going to accept that what once included is now comes with a fee.

*a reference to the theory that if you put a live frog in a pot of water and gradually turn up the heat he'll stay there until the water boils.