The big idea: An airline where everything is an auction
Airplanes are a space where behavior is set by unwritten social norms. What if it was set by money?
Modern air travel is the final frontier of etiquette. Every part of flying is up for debate, ranging from whether reclining your seat is rude to disagreements over who gets the armrest (my take: the middle should get both armrests).
Amidst the etiquette battle, airlines are moving towards unbundled basic economy tickets with paid add-ons. What if we could leverage this model to fix social norms between passengers? Introducing: Auction Airlines (AA), where everything is up for bid.
A universal interface for your flight
A ticket on Auction Airlines gives you the right to be on the plane — and that’s about it. The auction opens 48 hours before the flight, and it doesn’t fully close until you land.
Some items up for sale aren’t so different from other airlines: think premium economy, window seats, extra legroom, and a checked bag. But Auction Airlines goes further, allowing you to bid on virtually every part of the flight experience.
It starts with boarding. Today, the boarding process is driven by a combination of airline status, level of ticket, location on the plane, and other arbitrary processes. If you want to board an Auction Airlines flight early, you need to open your wallet. No need to rush for overhead bin space: each spot is assigned to the highest bidder.
Micro-auctions throughout the flight keep the excitement running. Desperate to use the bathroom? Bid against people in line to cut to the front. Want to guarantee you get a chicken meal before you have to settle for the pasta? Bid to secure a limited number of hot meals — with supply regulated by the airline to maximize price.
A “king of the hill” system adds to the thrill: some auctions give the current highest bidder control. The obvious use case is cabin temperature. If you’re somebody that likes it warm, bid above the current top holder to take control. The lights will go dim on international flights only when the king of the hill accepts it.
Finally, Auction Airlines will create auctions for all of the intangibles in-flight. No more ambiguity: bid against your neighbors for objective ownership of armrests and the right to recline your chair. Every preference will be actionable, down to asking the person in the aisle to let you out to use the bathroom.
And of course, you’ll be able to auction against parents to ban nearby children. Auction Airlines can bring the great Soren Iverson’s baby ban concept to life.
Prices bring clarity to intangible preferences
The auction system isn’t just there for profit. Etiquette breaks down when the rules aren’t universally recognized. And flight etiquette is particularly contentious — airplanes are a space where class, culture, and individual preferences collide against a backdrop of general anxiety.
An auction makes these otherwise-murky preferences explicit. Do you value keeping the window closed enough to pay $20? If the window seat holder wants to open it, they have to be willing to pay $21 or more. The act of bidding forces you to consider: do you really care that much? Or should you just bring an eye mask and forget about it?
Multiply that across every part of the flight and you can start to make tradeoffs. I’d happily give up my right to recline for the extra armrest — today this is communicated through a series of dirty looks, awkward waves, and aggressive stakes on space. On an Auction Airlines flight, the wallet does the talking.
The social dynamics of auction airlines
There’s plenty of research showing that people value things they pay for more than things they get for free. Navigating this reality is going to be the driving dynamic for Auction Airlines.
Politeness normally keeps you from making the aisle seat holder stand up too often. After paying $50 for unlimited aisle access, you’re going to want to stretch your legs every hour. People won’t just enjoy their ability to recline their seat after paying for it: they’re going to go back all the way for the full flight. Paid for social niceties probably break down a bit, which is great for driving new bids.
It’s also a little unfair to price cost conscious customers out of basic needs — it was bad enough when airlines stopped free checked bags. But the auctions come with an upside: the added revenue from auctions create room to lower base ticket prices. If we learned anything from the success of budget airlines, it’s that people will buy the cheaper ticket, regardless of the in-flight experience.
A Boeing 737 has a marginal cost to fly of approximately $132 per seat per hour of flight.1 Round it up to $150 per hour of flight and the ticket cost will still be competitive with most airlines.
Prices could come down even further as the airline gets a better sense of auction revenue, which means mastering auction psychology is key. One approach is seeding the auctions. Imagine that at purchase, 50% of your $200 ticket becomes a credit that can be applied to bids across the aircraft. This trains new customers who might not otherwise bid to engage with the system.
Even better, it raises the average overall price for different privileges by funneling more money into the system — meaning more space to lower the base fare.
Reputations and collusion
One big structural question is whether bids are made anonymously. Anonymous bids have a small social advantage in preventing awkwardness; there may be some value in keeping the window-seat holder in the dark about who forced them to hold it for six hours.
That said, No Dumb Ideas always supports transparency. Bids will be publicly shared, with your name and bidding history available on a profile page. This turns every bid into a multi-part game, with status plays, signaling, and psychological warfare. One outcome: does it make sense to overbid to create a reputation? If it becomes known that Business_Boss_87 has an unlimited corporate card and will bid until victory, they can start to get their pick of the plane as competitors drop out.
There’s also potential for collusion; a group of friends buying seats in a block could make informal agreements about their behavior and not bid anything on intangibles like armrest ownership. This wouldn’t necessarily blow up the market; groups that collude on buying seats together still risk a third party noticing the unclaimed armrest space and muscling in on the auction for seat selection.
How do you enforce this?
Enforcement of property rights is key — if people take overhead bin space that doesn’t belong to them, the entire system collapses.
Imagine a world with no active enforcement — the result is an anarchy that gives way to force. Gangs of business travelers would form cartels to enforce adherence to the allocation of purchased privileges. Competing gangs may crop up, with new fliers pushed into aligning with a group to enforce their claims. In a worst case scenario, one group could get a monopoly on violence and create a new government on the plane, distributing assets completely outside of the auction system.
To avoid this, airline staff will need to take a different attitude towards customers. There might be a new position on airplanes: the auction marshal, who ensures compliance with the terms of your bundle of purchased rights. Those videos you sometimes see of duct-taped passengers, or police waiting at the end of a flight? That’s a more common experience on Auction Airlines, with non-compliant customers arrested for theft of services after opening a window owned by the middle seatmate.
In the end, the best way to get compliance might be self-selection. People who regularly don’t bid and have bad experiences will start to opt for other airlines; those willing to customize their bundle in the free market will become loyal customers. Over time, Auction Airlines may sort for the customers most suited for it.
Official idea rating
4/5. Airlines are already going in this direction, progressively unbundling more core services every year. Maybe it’s time to go all in?
Flights are a series of implicit negotiations, with sidelong glances, rolled eyes, and subtle social pressure aligning your preferences with the people around you. Maybe letting people negotiate these concepts openly is the first step towards a healthier flying experience. Until then, I will continue to sigh but not do anything when the person in front of me keeps smashing their seat into my open laptop screen.
A 747 is estimated to cost $25k per hour of flight. At a 189 seat configuration, the marginal cost for a 100% economy flight would be $132.27 per hour. But premium seats are significantly more profitable, so real numbers would probably be a slightly lower marginal price per economy seat.
Fun. When broken up into specific aspects of travel, I realize how little value I place on extra comfort and how much I place on better logistics. I love direct flights. I love efficient boarding (JSX domestically is fantastic). I don't care endlessly about first class. If your butt is too big for a coach seat than put down the fork. I do like Swiss' first class cabin because it is so small and quiet. I can take my family on it, take up about 1/2 that cabin, and sit around a common table for dinner before sleeping on a flat bed. Worth the auction (and one often gets lucky with stink bids): https://www.swiss.com/es/en/book-and-manage/swiss-choice/upgrade-options/swiss-bid-upgrade
What about the inverse of this -- let's say I'm less than average height and don't mind at all if the person in front of me reclines -- can they pay ME, or can I get a cut, of the seat-recline fee? Let's say I'm a vegetarian, and those meals never run out, so it's not in my interest to bid on chicken -- maybe someone who wants chicken could pay ME to increase their chances.