&quot;Seat size penalties&quot; in airfare search engines will not work. The airlines have learned, often the hard way, that besides price, absolutely no other factors of any sort whatsoever are relevant. The vast majority of travelers will claim in surveys that they care about things like legroom, good service, not paying extra for a bag, etc., but then the instant you put them in front of a search page to choose a flight they proceed to choose based on price, only price and nothing but price.<p>Business travelers have higher standards, but they&#x27;re simply drowned out -- Scott Kirby (President of American Airlines) was recently quoted in media as claiming that, among unique passengers carried by AA, 87% fly one trip per year or less, and those flyers account for over half of the airline&#x27;s revenue.<p>Tellingly, this was used to justify AA joining Delta in rolling out a super-bare-bones fare class designed to compete for the &quot;choose based on price and only price&quot; market, and carrying similar restrictions and conditions to the standard tickets of the ultra-low-cost carriers like Spirit and Allegiant.<p>As an aside, it will be interesting to watch how this plays out in the next couple of years; Delta, which is generally the leader in implementing major changes among the three remaining big legacy carriers, has just announced changes which make their small number of extra-legroom coach seats, previously free for people holding status in their frequent-flier program, much harder to get without buying a ticket in a higher fare class (effectively, they now will sell those seats as a separate &quot;premium economy&quot; style cabin and fare, despite being neither a separate cabin nor anywhere close to the actual premium-economy offerings of European airlines). Since most business travelers are required to book into lower fare classes, on Delta they&#x27;ll be forced into knee-and-spine-crushing seats. Whether that will lead to decision-makers at those companies switching their contracts away from Delta, and thus finally claw back some ground from the ultra-price-sensitive race to the bottom prevailing in the industry, remains to be seen.