INSIDE
FEBRUARY 2017 BCBUSINESS 53
With great leg room comes great responsibil-
ity. Those lucky passengers who are seated
in the spacious exit rows of an aircraft are
instructed by ight attendants on what to
do in case of an emergency: pulling down
the handle, tossing out the hatch, heroically
checking for ames before leading the exo-
dus, etc. This is the price you pay for being
able to stretch out a little during your ight.
Or it used to be. These days the price of
an exit row seat is often money. "Premium
economy," they call it, a higher fare that lands
between economy and business class. What
used to be a lucky break has been monetized.
Will people start paying for things they
were accustomed to getting for free? Some
people probably thought installing fare
gates at SkyTrain stations was a dirty trick.
But fare gates are merely a way of prevent-
ing theft. And while some customers might
be reluctant to start paying for online prod-
ucts they once got free—music downloads
or video streaming services like Hulu—the
issue is not morally ambiguous. If you use a
product, you should expect to pay for it.
But there's a di†erence between making
people pay for goods and services, and
creating a hierarchy. Say this for the new
airline premium economy plans—they
are at least an extension of a class system
that has almost always been part of the
air travel experience. Di†erent service,
No More
Free
Rides?
ILLUSTRATION: KAGAN McLEOD
From more leg room
to jumping the queue,
there may soon be a
price for everything
by Steve Burgess
Get a tranche of this! ... Brian Scudamore goes to the gutter ... Hemp hearts to your door + more
F E B R U A R Y 2 0 17
"It's in Sun Valley, which is about
1,800 metres above sea level... You
definitely feel your chest right away,
like, 'Oh my gosh, how come I'm so
short of breath?'"–p.57
Off lıne
E V E R Y B O D Y ' S TA L K I N '
WATERCOOLER
