Standing Seats on Budget Airlines May Be the Future of Short Flights

Think about this for a second: When did you last have a good time on an airplane? Not just a moment of levity, but a genuinely positive flight. Because I actually can’t remember one. Sure, I’ve read some good books, watched some bad movies, leafed through some surprisingly lovely in-flight magazines, eaten a lot of peanuts, and gotten a little bit of writing done. But I rarely leave a plane feeling anything other than rumpled, stale, and annoyed, and I never feel refreshed, satisfied, or happy. So when Euro Weekly broke the news that a collection of European budget airlines plan to drop prices on short flights by replacing several rows of traditional seats with more rows of even smaller and less comfortable stool-style seats, I had one takeaway—bring it on.

According to Euro Weekly, prices for these flights could be as low as 5 euros, or $5.68, which is cheaper than the hourly cost of a parking meter in LA. That’s also inexpensive enough that it would be worth the pain of flying across Europe in the seats from Riddler’s Revenge at Six Flags. The airplane experience is already garbage in just about every way, so there’s relatively little harm in making it a bit worse—as long as airlines make the tradeoff justify the sacrifice. And the ability to get from Paris to Copenhagen, or someday from LA to San Francisco, for like $6 each way sounds pretty worth it to me. Shit, if it means I can pop up to Portland for lunch, or over to Phoenix for dinner, and back for less than the cost of the meal, you can strap me to the wing for all I care.

Unless you’re Alan Cumming napping on a pile of non-sequential bills, your typical flight is already cramped and dull, unhygienic and unfriendly, and deeply stressful. The incremental enshittification process has long since sapped the joy and glamor out of air travel. Removed from context, it’s sort of unthinkable that the primary words to describe a flight—a miraculous trip in which you soar across continents and over oceans in a metal tube going 600 miles per hour some seven miles up in the air—would be “uncomfortable” and “boring,” but here we are. So if these seats make the in-flight experience a little worse in exchange for a large leap in accessibility, then maybe it’s not so bad.

In theory, creating a system that brings regional air travel closer to public transit could be good for everyone. And like public transportation, it may be a little uncomfortable, inconvenient, and dull—but if it can also make a 1,000-mile trip financially accessible and the new norm, well, that feels like a pretty cool and futuristic goal worth pursuing.

Of course, the more likely result is that these ultra-cheap fares—if they eventually materialize—will become a way to get you in the door and cram you in like cargo. Then, once we’re accustomed to the practice, prices will creep back up, and the services that airlines cut will never return. In air travel, it’s pretty safe to assume that everything will get a lot worse, with no tangible benefit to consumers. But a boy can dream.