I've been a passenger on a moderate number of business/corporate/government vs. super-rich-person jets, and a top quality commercial business class or most first class products are actually a more comfortable experience, at a much lower cost)
True in many cases, though not always. I think there are a lot of variables at play, all of which need to be accounted for: wait time and hassle at commercial airports vs. private jet strips; minimal to no risk of delays; and so forth. I agree that corporate private jets hardly offer anything approaching a luxurious in-flight experience, but in those cases, luxury of in-flight experience isn't the goal. Rather, the goals are roughly a) mitigation of delay risks; b) ease of travel and convenience; c) provision of a sterile, noise-pollution-free, whining-baby-free flight environment in which to conduct business and get stuff done in the air.
An uber-rich-person jet, on the other hand -- assuming we're talking about one owned purely for convenience and/or vanity, and not for corporate purposes -- is a more luxurious experience, with luxury as one of the core goals. True, most of these jets are too small to offer the day bed or stewardess service you'd get in first class on a major international flight. But I'd argue that those benefits of commercial are outweighed by power and freedom to fly at will, private catering on the flight, etc. Also, the most comparable use case is private jet vs. first class domestic, rather than private vs. first class international. International fist class is where all the bells and whistles come into play. Domestic first class is a pretty unremarkable experience; it is debatably the coach experience of 10 to 15 years ago.
> it is debatably the coach experience of 10 to 15 years ago.
Not even remotely. I'm going to argue the contrary, that coach-class flying reached its race to the bottom about 10-15 years ago and didn't begin to recover until discount airlines became mainstream and started to compete directly and profitably with the traditional airlines. yes, they've actually improved, believe it or not. the other variables not so much.
Flying coach in the seventies would be akin to flying business class these days, but still not there in terms of seating space or convenience. Those who remember the days before airline deregulation can attest to that.
I'll concede that my dates were totally arbitrary, but I believe my overall point still stands. That point, btw, was more about the relative decline of First w/r/t Coach than about the absolute decline of either. As far as I'm concerned, domestic First is nowhere near what it used to be, and it's currently approximating the Coach experience of X years ago, where X is an imprecise but extant number.
Coach, as well, is certainly nothing like it used to be. It's been getting better in recent years, to your point, but only very slightly. I think it's still somewhere in the basin of an overall historic trough, though perhaps with upward direction.
(Full disclosure: as a very tall person, I feel changes in seating configuration, etc., a lot more accutely than most people do. So it's possible my opinions are either amplified by, or colored by, my individual perspective).
Efficiency has increased in coach -- tighter seat pitch, extra revenue charges for exit rows, etc., but for me, video-on-demand (or, portable video devices and in-ear-monitor headphones) makes up for a lot.
Pre-deregulation, they couldn't compete on price, so they competed on quality of perks (free food, service, etc.). Once they deregulated, they competed on price, but then started cost cutting on perks to make earnings. It was only after LCCs and the "premium experience LCCs" were successful that airlines both eliminated bundled perks and provided for-fee superior quality products for sale.
The "economy plus" type products for frequent fliers also go a long way to make economy tolerable for larger people.
I think air travel will continue to improve -- the biggest setback has been the 9/11 security increase, but other than that, the legacy carriers seem to be getting better.
I don't think you can use arbritrary (made up) information in describing the historical state of an event or situation. It's there in the books; either it happened or it did not. And my point is that both in the past and present, the upper levels of air travel as a whole have never declined to a point commensurate with the highest level of comfort and service achieved by lower class levels in the past forty years, which is my personal experience of flying. On a LCC or a short-hop/shuttle codeshare airline maybe there is little difference in classes, but in the legacy carriers even though the standards have adjusted downwards as society has changed it norms along with demand for said standards, there is a clear distinction between flying coach, business and first, from check-in to on-boarding, in the air and deplaning, the overall experience, across the industry, is different and it is still designed that way right from inception. And maybe that's one of the reasons that they've failed to make any real progress aside from surviving, since deregulation.
True in many cases, though not always. I think there are a lot of variables at play, all of which need to be accounted for: wait time and hassle at commercial airports vs. private jet strips; minimal to no risk of delays; and so forth. I agree that corporate private jets hardly offer anything approaching a luxurious in-flight experience, but in those cases, luxury of in-flight experience isn't the goal. Rather, the goals are roughly a) mitigation of delay risks; b) ease of travel and convenience; c) provision of a sterile, noise-pollution-free, whining-baby-free flight environment in which to conduct business and get stuff done in the air.
An uber-rich-person jet, on the other hand -- assuming we're talking about one owned purely for convenience and/or vanity, and not for corporate purposes -- is a more luxurious experience, with luxury as one of the core goals. True, most of these jets are too small to offer the day bed or stewardess service you'd get in first class on a major international flight. But I'd argue that those benefits of commercial are outweighed by power and freedom to fly at will, private catering on the flight, etc. Also, the most comparable use case is private jet vs. first class domestic, rather than private vs. first class international. International fist class is where all the bells and whistles come into play. Domestic first class is a pretty unremarkable experience; it is debatably the coach experience of 10 to 15 years ago.