The problem is that commercial air travel is fundamentally unpleasant. Pack, drive to the airport, park, carry heavy things long distances, wait in long lines, take off your shoes and belt, be inspected infected and detected, stop start stop start, wait for your fellow travelers to cram everything they could carry into overhead bins, get up to let strangers in, bang elbows, endure g-forces, thoughts of death, pressure, noise... unending noise, temperature swings, turbulence, miniature port-o-potties that smell the same as normal sized, bad food, no food, four ounce sodas with huge ice cubes, sky mall (thank God for sky mall), now do that all in reverse, add ear popping, wait for your bag to crash onto a conveyor, wait in more lines, drive in more traffic, feel bad for two days... If the airlines could remove three or four of those problems for say twice or four times the money, it would still be a miserable day. Most people would rather just bang elbows and get it over with for as little money as possible.

I guess it's different as I'm not in the USA, but I generally don't mind flying for <4 hour flights.

Security for me is always a breeze, no need to remove shoes here and I just don't wear a belt. If I don't have checked luggage the process is even nicer.

Flying between Australia and New Zealand is about as easy as it gets. I can check in online, and security takes all of 15 minutes, if that. 4 hours on a plane isn't too bad and usually I'm in a 3 set row with only 1 other person. It's nice to have a few hours to unplug from everything and watch a movie or play Stellaris. Customs/immigration on the way in (to both Australia and New Zealand) is so easy, the whole system is electronic, so the only human I interact with is the customs officer who confirms I have no prohibited items.

If it's a night flight, anything up to 8 hours is fine for me. I've never had problems sleeping on a plane, or anywhere for that matter.

$10k would barely get you a business class seat these days for long haul flights.

I guess it depends on where you fly. The routes I fly to Europe and South America are typically 5-7K although I have seen less. It also depends on what type of business class seat you want. If you are fine with the older style reclining business class seat you cloud fly Copa for $3500 or even less sometimes. If you want a modern lie-flat product like Delta One or United Polaris than you are going to pay a bit more. I typically can book in advance though.

Depends. I’ve gotten business for as cheap as $2k one way transpacific. Got lucky once and scored ~$900 between Beijing and Bali round trip. Google flights helps a lot if you have flexibility.

Flights in Asia are generally far cheaper and, in my experience, more comfortable. Business class on longer flights in Asia is much cheaper than the same distance in other places I visit. But usually economy has less seats / more space too, at least in the airlines I fly with.

I think you mean first. Business class would run at 1.5-3k. At least for Emirates; and that's pretty long flights.

Not true at all. Plenty of people do it both. I flew international first class a few weeks ago and the cabin was 100% full. There were a couple of guys that looked like they might have paid for the upgrade with miles but most people looked like they probably paid cash, especially the ones that immediately went to sleep in their beds and never so much as had a glass of champagne.

As someone who used to fly a lot for work and get free upgrades or use points for them, the amazing mystique of it all wears off after awhile. Even with points you'll find me in my bed right after take off. The drinks and food are fine and all but waking up in another timezone 100% fresh is priceless and adds 2 days to your trip minimum.

But does it scale? They only have a few first cabins. So maybe there is room for more but only a couple more. Not the whole plane.

At a certain level of income/wealth, the time spent traveling is valued higher than the dollar amount. That’s why premium airlines include first class suites with beds. If those offerings weren’t profitable they wouldn’t exist.

The problem is that the market segments such that these travelers are no longer served by commercial aviation. If you are the sort of person whose time is worth $10K/hour, you fly private. You get your bed, and gym, and first-class suite and attendants who wait on your every move, and you also don't have to go through security or wait in the terminal or deal with other passengers.

The lie-flat business class seats aren't actually for those sorts of people, they are for ordinary corporate mid-level employees who fly for business. I have some Googler friends in Australia who will regularly take the bed-seats on the Sydney => SFO run. The company pays for it - when you're going to be paying the employee $10K anyway for the two weeks they're away, and they're generating well over that in value by having the next 3 months of work synced up with what the home office is doing, why would you not?

Its actually not quite that simple for long distance flying. Most private jets are not G650ERs which have a good long range and can fly a route that an airline might use a 777 or A350 for. The G650 sleeps 10 so you probably wouldn't want more than that for a long hall flight. And I mean if someone was going to let me fly a 650 for the same price as international business I would do it. Figure operating a long range jet runs about $5K per hour exclusive of actually buying and financing the plane. So the flight I am going to take in a couple of months would be roughly $65000 in variable costs.

Even at making 10K per hour ($20M per year) its going to get quite pricey to fly a long range private jet.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2015/november/1...

Depends. If that nice seat takes up 10x the space of an ecomony seat, it better cost at least 10x as much. Otherwise, the economy class cabin would be subsidizing the first class cabin. As prices ebb and flow, surely this does sometimes happen.

A few years ago I was listening to an interview with (I believe) Tim Clark, president of Emirates, and he said that just by filling up business class - which happens most of the time - alone, their A380 flights from DXB to LHR are turning a profit. So the other 400 passengers in economy are a bonus.

Wendover did a great video on just this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

Yes, business class is basically what pays for the trip.

It's the business travelers that are subsidizing the economy ones, not the other way round.

So it doesn't make sense to make economy more comfortable, actually the opposite.

Usually one tends to put it the other way, that economy pays for the trip and business class delivers the profit. Which makes sense because that is how e.g. a low cost carrier operates. While business class only flights are almost non-existent even though that in theory would make more money.

I think they're non-existant because there's not enough demand.

The travel group I work for caters for corporations and luxury travelers, and they'd stop selling economy in a heartbeat if they could (it's a money-loser for the company, as there's little to no commissions on them)

I don't think it has to do with demand as such. It is just hard to allocate resources with business class only flights. With a traditional layout you can oversell economy and upgrade or push people to the next flight. If you are running all your business class capacity on a few flights you can't do that. Nor can you have the same amount of routes. I guess you can say that is because of demand, but it is more because of the model. "Tourist business" doesn't really exist, unless maybe we count Norwegian.

That said, I would love to see an all business Airbus A321neoLR with Thompson Vantage Solo seats.

But that doesnt mean they arent paying more per foot. Profitability and the ratio between classes are different concepts.

Yes, at those levels it's basically a tossup between private jet and premium first class.

Actually, compared to a private jet, commercial first class is ridiculously cheap, like an order of magnitude less.

Which is why they avoid first class like the plague.

Who would want to have to put up with all those plebes?

That’s the stereotype, but in many (most?) cases the actual reason is about time, not brushing shoulders with the merely megarich.

Very rich people spend money to avoid ever waiting for anything or anyone who isn’t a close acquaintance or high status person. This is what private planes optimize for.

Indeed. The ones who complain about passengers ruining their first class flight are funny - they don't realise they're travelling on public transport.