Alaska Airlines has more often than not convinced me to upgrade to first class. The one way ticket will be ~$100-150 steerage and ~$200 for first class, which gets me that human sized seat and personal space, usb and standard power. That upgrade is worth it to me. $50-100 to reduce my anxiety for a few hours? sold.
I'd be all over that. I recently flew a short Virgin America flight where I only had to pay $190 instead of $140 to get a first class seat. Frankly, I'd pay double for every flight I'm on to get even half that much comfort. The seats were massive, the legroom insane (could not touch the seat in front of me with my feet if I tried), full recliner, etc.
You'd think there would be a logical in-between, but in a world where 20% more space in business class costs you 5x as much, there's no room for the average customer to have a pleasant flight.
Sure they have. All three of the big legacy US airlines have some form of extra-legroom economy: American has Main Cabin Extra, Delta has Comfort+ and United has Economy Plus.
The problem is those seats cost more, and people shop for airfares based solely on the price they see in a search engine.
Airlines have tried all sorts of tricks to get people to buy the nicer seat. They've tried showing it to you as an option at booking. They've tried offering it as an upsell afterward. They've tried offering it during check-in. They've tried branding it as a separate fare class labeled "premium" but still a reasonable-looking price.
It's entirely due to passenger behavior at this point: people will grumble and complain and whine about the legroom and the lack of power and the extra fees for everything, but the next time they book a ticket they'll still just sort by lowest fare and pick that.
It'd be one thing if the basic seats were basic but actually felt like you could sit in them four hours at a stretch without seriously jeopardizing your health. As it is, if the airlines could get away with packing people into 80cm by 80cm by 80cm crates they damn well would, and they'd charge $80 to upgrade to a full meter.
I specifically mentioned that I was looking for a human-sized seat, not more legroom. I'm not unusually tall, I'm an average-sized male adult, and I'd like to have somewhere to put my arm. I don't really enjoy having my elbows pinned to my sides for 4 or 6 or 14 hours.
Wider seats take up more space, which means fewer seats which means less revenue. And there's no way they'll give that up; they're facing competition both domestically and internationally now from sardine-can aircraft layouts on low-cost carriers.
So these days, US-based airlines have standardized on a width of 17-18 inches in economy class. Used to be long-haul international flights would have slightly wider seats, but now they're aiming to get 10-across seating in economy and you can't do that with 18-inch-wide seats.
If you want a wider seat, your options are to pay for first class or (if traveling internationally) pay for premium economy on a foreign carrier.
American Airlines way back had "more room" seats which were only slightly more expensive. I loved it and became loyal. But then they stopped. I guess not a lot of people wanted to pay the few bucks.
They still have those seats; they're branded as "Main Cabin Extra". They're not super expensive, but the price will vary depending on the perceived desirability of the specific seat you select (i.e., an extra-legroom middle seat probably doesn't cost as much as an extra-legroom aisle).
Most airlines also build free or discounted access to those seats into their frequent-flyer perks, though Delta has recently begun cutting back hard on that and treating it as a possible-but-not-guaranteed after-booking "upgrade" even for their top-tier customers.
