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Comment by jusben1369 | Hacker News Reader

I'm so torn reading this. I do occasionally fly Southwest and I'm always impressed with how everyone working for Southwest seems just as focused on on time as I am. At the same time I think they started the "race to the bottom" that has made air travel such an increasingly unpleasant experience now in the US.

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Flying on Southwest is actually the most pleasant experience that I've had, compared to the other carriers. They allow two free checked bags for example, and their employees are much friendlier and helpful. They give out free beer and wine several days a year (Mother's Day, Father's Day, Southwest's birthday, etc.) There certainly has been a race to the bottom in air travel the past few years, but it doesn't look like Southwest is participating.

How exactly do you define race to the bottom? If on pricing alone, I can maybe see your argument. But Southwest has had a pretty consistently high level of service and low level of fees.

This emphasis on turning air travel into bus travel. How quickly can we turn a plane? How quickly can we board people? How many tickets can we oversell hoping/expecting some people won't show leading to stressed staff and passengers getting bumped? How many flights a day can we push with no wiggle room so that a single storm in Chicago means your San Diego to Houston flight is 2 hours late. That whole mentality that it's ok to run the business that way.

I suppose there's some parallels to be drawn to software. I've often heard things like targeting 80% of memory / CPU / networking so that you have some slack for unexpected events. It seems like Southwest focuses on running as close to 100% asset utilization as possible. It's not necessarily optimal when there are issues, but I find it hard to fault them for what I consider to be a pretty legitimate business choice.

People Express is probably the most guilty party. Southwest has just been probably the most successful at building a business around no frills flying. Given deregulation though, the race to the bottom was pretty much inevitable. Too many people pick flights on the basis of lowest price.

I don't know my history of cheap airlines, but it seems that, today, Ryan Air is much more egregious about "racing to the bottom" than any other airline.

That's probably true based on what I've heard. (Though I've never flown them and hope to keep it that way.) Spirit in the US is apparently pretty bad too. However, they're pretty much all governed by the same calculus that a lot of people are going to buy their tickets based on whichever fare is lowest. There's some wiggle room on service quality within that constraint but not a whole lot.

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