> But my complaints about flights being too full is based only on my own experience. I don't think people are upset about airplanes crowdedness because they surveyed a bunch of people and concluded from the survey that airplanes are crowded.
This is still falling prey to the error described in the OP.
Imagine that 99% of all flights were totally empty, and the remaining 1% of flights were completely full. Despite the fact that 99% of all seats are vacant in this scenario, 100% of all flyers will have the experience of being on exclusively packed flights.
Except that with what I described, there is no paradox. If I report experiencing flights that were all full, and someone says “but 99% of flights were empty,” there is nothing surprising or counterintuitive about that (other than that I would have expected airlines to be more economically reasonable). And it certainly is no consolation to me!
Yeah but I think they have a point in that when I book a flight in that scenario—if we don’t require that all the completely empty flights remain completely empty—then I’m going to wind up as the only passenger on one of the (previously) empty flights, rather than ending up on the full one. Unless the empty flights don’t allow bookings.
This is still falling prey to the error described in the OP.
Imagine that 99% of all flights were totally empty, and the remaining 1% of flights were completely full. Despite the fact that 99% of all seats are vacant in this scenario, 100% of all flyers will have the experience of being on exclusively packed flights.