This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 13th, 2017. I'm Caleb Brown.

Airlines may not be as competitive as we might hope, and how the market for air travel is restricted

means airlines can only innovate and compete among a narrow range of factors.

Gary Leff is the chief financial officer at the Mercatus Center and a blogger at View from the Wing.

We spoke last week about costs and benefits of airline regulation and innovation.

I saw a story in the New York Times basically detailing how Spirit Airlines, among others, are trying to, on the one hand, put more seats into planes and they're very seem to be very open about what

they're doing they're saying look we we put more seats on the plane so that

everybody can fly for less money.

And there are groups like Flyers rights

that are fighting for, I assume,

additional regulation of airlines that are trying to provide, you know, sardine quality

accommodations for a very low price.

So, you know, the thing to understand is, you know, the traditional measure of space when we're talking about legroom is called seat pitch.

It's the distance from seat back to seat back.

And an airline like Southwest Airlines is going to give you 32 inches seat back to seat back. And an airline like Southwest Airlines is going to give you 32 inches seat back to seat back.

American is now squeezing that down to 30 in some seats.

United squeezes that down to 30 as well.

It's not the comfortable product that I really want to fly if I can avoid it.

And I think it's important for consumers to know the difference in the products.

Southwest and JetBlue are going to offer more legroom, so when they're making a

choice of a similar price point.

But the ultra-low-cost carriers, Spirit Allegiant Frontier, are going to offer even less down

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