“Calculated misery” is the theory that commercial airlines make the customer experience so terrible that people spend money on services that were once free to avoid the inconvenience.
Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, first coined the term in a 2014 article for the New Yorker, in which he described a concerted effort by the airline industry to maximize profits by producing poor-quality basic products and then offering upgrades for purchase.
“For fees to work, there has to be something worth paying that should be avoided.” “That requires, at some level, a strategy that can be called ‘calculated misery,'” Wu said.
“Free basic services need to be restricted enough to make people willing to pay to avoid them.” And this is where the suffering begins.”
Airlines benefit by charging for services such as seat selection, baggage and priority boarding.
Airlines use the tactic of “calculated misery” to make flying unpleasant, so customers pay for extras, including priority boarding, to avoid long waits
The U.S. Department of Transportation found that airlines earned $5.3 billion in baggage fees alone in 2022
According to a recent report, eight major U.S. airlines generated $4.2 billion in revenue from seat fees in 2022
“Airlines have become experts at charging passengers for everything from checked bags to priority boarding to choosing a window, aisle, or front cabin seat,” says Eric Rosen, Content- Director of travel sales company The Points Guy. Nexstar said.
“For many travelers, it can be confusing to understand what they are getting for the extra money they spend.”
A recent report from airline consulting agency IdeaWorksCompany found that eight major U.S. airlines generated $4.2 billion in seat fee revenue in 2022.
By purchasing an airline ticket, the customer boards the plane, but without paying to select their seat, passengers often do not know where they will sit or who they will sit with.
After last year’s holiday travel chaos, when Southwest Airlines canceled more than 80 percent of its flights just before Christmas, President Joe Biden promised to lower airline surcharges.
“We will ban airlines from charging up to $50 round-trip for families to only sit together,” Biden said in his State of the Union address in February.
“Bag fees are bad enough – you can’t just treat your child like a piece of luggage.”
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, airlines earned $5.3 billion in baggage fees alone in 2022.
In December 2022, flights from Seattle were canceled due to freezing rain. After the holiday travel chaos, lawmakers vowed to cut airline fees
Passengers wait at Seattle airport after all flights were canceled in December 2022. In response to the Christmas airline chaos, President Biden called on airlines to pay additional fees, including the family seating fee
Spirit Airlines has the highest hidden fees of any U.S. airline — making trips 736 percent more expensive than their base fare, according to an analysis by discount code website NetVoucherCodes.
In August, the airline agreed to pay up to $8.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by passengers over fraudulent baggage fees of up to $100.
The lawsuit alleged that the budget airline’s carry-on baggage fees were a surprise and were deliberately hidden to make a profit.
The plane boarding process is notoriously inefficient and is complicated by airline upgrades for passengers for queue seats and carry-on luggage.
Passengers who are last to board face the problem of no space for their luggage in the overhead bin, and some try to get ahead of the queue when boarding. However, efficient boarding is complicated by airlines’ desire to make money from upgrades.
“Priority boarding is a moneymaker.” “To a certain point, that money is worth more than the worry of boarding three minutes early every time,” says Seth Miller, who writes about the travel experience at Paxex.aero.
Rob Burgess of frequent flyer website Head for Points said: “There are good reasons why boarding systems are still a mess 100 years after the world’s oldest airline was founded.”
Spirit Airlines has agreed to pay up to $8.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by passengers over fraudulent baggage fees of up to $100
United Airlines will make changes to its boarding process this week, allowing economy class passengers to board window seats first
“While mathematicians love to design the perfect system, it is always undone by passengers and airport staff not behaving the way the models dictate.”
“The best-regarded model is generally considered to be the Steffen boarding method, which has been proven to board an aircraft twice as quickly as the back-to-front method,” Burgess said.
“The process is to get people into the plane in a straight line and in the following order from back to front. Odd-numbered window seat, even-numbered window seat, odd-numbered middle seat, even-numbered middle seat, and so on.’
United Airlines will begin carrying economy class passengers with window seats initially. This is intended to reduce the time aircraft spend on the ground.
The airline said in an internal memo that it would implement the plan on October 26. The plan – called WILMA, for windows, center aisle and aisle – has been tested at multiple locations and is expected to reduce boarding times by up to two minutes.
United is making the change because it has noticed that boarding times have increased by two minutes since 2019.