In the early days of train travel (1840s), they quickly realised that the first class passengers arrived no faster than the cheaper passengers, somthey did the only sensible thing.  They took the roof and Windows off the third class carriages and made you share them with cattle.<p>This way people paid extra to avoid the weather and cow shit<p>There is a hard upper limit to how good flying in a tin can at 35,000 feet can be made (1)<p>If airlines could strap economy class passengers to the wings they would<p>(1) actually an ad exec made an excellent point in a ted talk - instead of spending 4bn on reducing the time the high speed train went from London to Paris, spend 2bn on half naked super models handing out free champagne and no one will care how long the journey is.  This is of course what airline stewardesses were supposed to be before all those pesky lawsuits.