Slate Money | Money Travels: How Much Would You Pay to Not Wait in Line?

Slate Daily Feed

Slate Podcasts

News, Business, Society & Culture

4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special episode of Slate Money Travels, Felix Salmon, Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spiers discuss what extras are really worth paying for when you travel. Airlines, especially want to nickel and dime for every little thing. But is the extra leg room worth it? What about getting off the plane sooner? Can you put a price on not waiting in line? Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, this is Ava from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly,
0:07.1	and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay
0:12.9	secure, with the most advanced AI automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether
0:17.8	you're a startup going for your first SO stock two or ISO-27,001,
0:21.5	or a growing enterprise managing vendor risk, Banta makes it quick, easy and scalable,
0:26.4	and I'm not to say that because I work here. Get started today at banta.com.
0:32.9	Hello! Welcome to Slate Money Travel.
0:38.3	I'm Felix Salmon.
0:39.4	I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios.
0:43.0	Hello, hello.
0:44.1	I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times.
0:48.1	Hello.
0:49.1	We are going to talk about the amount of money that people are willing to pay for basically just
0:58.0	like not being stuck in lines at airports, which is not just in airports. It's also on
1:05.5	airplanes. This whole idea came to me when I was checking out, when I was buying a flight on Aer Lingus,
1:13.8	and they were like, select your seat. And all of the seats were the same, except for the exit
1:18.4	row. But if you ignore the exit row, all of the seats were the same. And the price of the seats
1:24.1	ranged quite dramatically according to how close they were to the front of the plane.
1:30.1	The ones near the front are like $65.
1:32.0	The ones at the back are free.
1:35.0	It doesn't even matter whether it's a middle seat or not.
1:38.3	People really want to be at the front of the plane.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.