Last week, President Biden said:
Some airlines, if you want six more inches between you and the seat in front, you pay more money but you don’t know it until you purchase your ticket. Look, folks, these are junk fees, they’re unfair and they hit marginalized Americans the hardest, especially low-income folks and people of color.
Actually, I just flew on Thursday and Monday, and I purchased more leg room. It felt closer to 3 inches than 6 inches, but whatever it was made a big difference. You actually do know it before you purchase your ticket. Indeed, the airlines make it quite obvious. Why doesn’t Biden know that? Could it be that he hasn’t purchased an airline ticket in a long time? Just a hunch.
How are they unfair? They give people a choice. Lower-income people who, I presume he’s saying, value leg room less, can pay less. How does that hit marginalized Americans? Actually, I think it helps. The reason is that the payment for those extra 3 inches, multiplied over all the passengers who pay it on a given flight, more than makes up for the lost revenue from the extra seats the airline could have had, or else the airlines wouldn’t do it. If so, this helps marginalized Americans because the airline makes more money on the flight with more legroom. The airline needs to make a certain amount of revenue to justify a flight. There will be more flights and, therefore, more seats.
So Biden can help marginalized Americans by withdrawing his statement.
There’s a specific way he can disproportionately help black Americans: get the Food and Drug Administration to back off from its proposal to ban menthol cigarettes. The Harvard School of Public Health states:
Manufacturers have long targeted Black Americans with advertisements for menthol cigarettes, which remain the overwhelming preference among Black smokers. Although they smoke at similar rates as the general population, Black smokers experience greater health consequences from the habit. This has been linked in part to their higher consumption of menthol cigarettes.
Manufacturers tend to “target” people who want their product. The FDA is proposing to target black Americans by banning the product. If your view is that people’s preferences don’t count and that the government should prevent people from doing something that harms them, then you could conclude that the FDA is helping them. But if your view is that people should be allowed to consume even things that harm them, especially when they know, as pretty much everyone does, that cigarettes harm those who smoke them long-term, then you would conclude that the FDA is hurting them.
My view is the latter.
READER COMMENTS
MarkW
Nov 2 2022 at 8:59am
Assuming we have to take such silly Biden utterances seriously, the people who are most impacted by lack of legroom are obviously men generally, not low-income or people of color.
That said, I’m 6’1″ and never bother to pay extra for legroom. I fit OK lengthwise in a standard seat as long as I make sure there’s nothing underneath the seat in front of me (except my legs). But, being broad-shouldered, what really make me uncomfortable is having another broad-shouldered person sitting next to me. There’s no way to upgrade out of that except first-class, though, and I’m not willing to pay that much of a premium, so there I am.
Dylan
Nov 2 2022 at 12:34pm
I don’t know the context of what he is talking about to know if this is what he meant, but one thing that I’ve noticed that has picked up over the last year or so is airlines adding in fees that make it harder to do an apples to apples comparison on sites like Kayak. For instance, Jetblue removed the option to bring along a carry-on in their base fare sometime in the last year or two, it’s not even something you can purchase a la carte. Instead, you have to buy their next tier up pricing, which wasn’t (at least initially) on the aggregator sites. And, it isn’t usually obvious until you go to purchase the ticket what the exact restrictions are (and many times not even then if you don’t purposely go looking for them) So, you think you’re comparing fairly equivalent products, but you’re actually looking at two different things. Spirit and Ryan Air in Europe are both famous for this.
Johnson85
Nov 3 2022 at 12:56pm
That was my guess as to what he was talking about also. But it seems startlingly paternalistic, even for a democrat, for the federal government to worry about people flying (who pretty much by definition are doing relatively well) having to first select a flight before finding out that there will be an option to pay more to get more room. (I think everybody pretty much knows this at this point? And I don’t think it would be helpful to me to have different prices presented to me for the same flight before narrowing down by time of flight).
I mean, it would be nice if there was a standard fare that you could compare across airlines (e.g., the fare that shows up on Kayak or Google Flights all consist of the cost of one carry on and one checked bag, even if you have the option to reduce the price by removing the checked bag on some airlines), but it’s just not that big of a deal. If I am using a site aggregator, I know that Spirit’s low price may not be that low by the time you add fees. Somewhat inconvenient to do an apples and paples comparison, but it’s not like anybody is fooled by it.
diz
Nov 3 2022 at 4:50pm
I’m over 6’3″ and can deal with the legroom if necessary. I’d pay more to have the person in front of me not lean back into my space than for a little more legroom. I should note that as a frequent flyer with some status I can get some of those high legroom seats for free. It does create a little more brand loyalty.
Regardless of my preferences, I get what the airlines are doing. They are segmenting their customers and attempting to get more revenue from customers who value space more. Not sure how the government helps by preventing this. Can’t even imagine why Biden would racialize it — except his side thinks it’s good politics for some reason.
Comments are closed.