The increasing class-ism of travel

Travel is either great or a nightmare, depending on who you are asking. The difference between day-drinking and rose-all-day is your class status. And it seems that the difference between great travel and a nightmare is dependent on your class status, too.

Travel should be for everyone. And I understand that there is a huge difference between bare-bones economy and business class. But it really feels that the last four years have taken perks from the econ class and reinforced them in the expensive part of the planes. When you think about it the extra fees for this and that, which used to be included on the economy ticket, amount to a poor tax. All those add-ons are included and yet, business class fares have dropped 3% since 2019. During the same time, economy fares have gone up 14 percent. And that’s not adding in all the extra fees.

Ok, sure. Business class seats are low because business travel has not recovered. But there is something more going on here. This all smells like good old American greed. And the folks that are up in the middle section are doing well. Most could find ways to cut expenses as inflation rapidly shot up. (Think buying at Walmart instead of Target.) I’m lucky. Neither my partner nor I ever had kids. Traveling still comes in much cheaper and easier with only two people. Household expenses are a lot easier to deal with also.

But really. It feels that the airlines are really putting the fee punishment on the less well-off. True, some of us are cheaper to begin with. I like the cheap fare. I don’t like getting five and ten’ed with fees to get things that used to be included. Just make the fare upfront and honest.

I sort of get the Ala cart menu of the super-cheap airfare. If you’re a minimalist and can stand a little discomfort, why spend money on transportation? Spend the money when you get to your destination.

But this feels like a way to dig more money out of your pocket while the airlines still try to claim they have low fares. Just give us the real cost of travel and we can make the choice to fly or not. Of course, the airlines are worried that we might not decide to fly. Since business travel has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels, they are in a bind.