Thus airlines are increasingly cutting back services in coach or charging passengers for things that used to be free, like meals ($5 for a snack box on United) or drinks ($2 for a 16-fluid-ounce bottle of water on Spirit) or, in the case of Delta, US Airways, Northwest and Continental, starting to use narrow-body planes more frequently on trans-Atlantic flights, making those long-haul flights more cost-effective, albeit at the expense of passenger comfort.

It’s all simple economics. In January, United removed half-ounce pretzel snack mixes from the economy section of flights that are less than two hours long, about 29 percent of its flights, to save what it says is about $650,000 a year. (Cutting out pretzels has reportedly saved Northwest $2 million a year.) Meanwhile, American has estimated that it would save $30 million a year by eliminating free meal service in coach. Last September, in a move that extinguished any hope of hot meals returning to coach, the airline removed the rear galleys — including the oven — from its MD-80 aircraft and replaced them with four seats. That change, the airline told The Washington Post, will be worth an additional $34 million a year. Overall, the amount of money the nine largest passenger carriers in the United States spend on food per passenger has been slashed to about $3.40 from $5.92 in 1992, according to the Department of Transportation.

And wonder why it’s almost impossible to get a pillow anymore? Again, it comes down to money. American has said it saved $300,000 when it removed pillows from its MD-80s in November 2004. In February 2005 it began removing pillows from 737s, 757s and Airbus 300s on nearly all flights within the continental United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico, with the airline explaining that the change saved it $600,000.

The story is much different in the front of the plane — and it’s not just things like the four-course meal (served on china, with real utensils, and with a choice of four wines) that American now serves its business-class passengers on overseas flights and the fact that, yes, a pillow and a blanket still await you.

Passengers flying business class on United from Washington Dulles to Frankfurt, for example, are now offered “180-degree lie-flat” seats. The upgraded seats, which are part of a multimillion-dollar makeover of its international premium cabins, transform into 6-foot-4-inch beds and feature larger personal TV screens, iPod adapters and noise-canceling headphones. Delta Air Lines and American are also upgrading their upper-class cabins on international flights with such features as wider, bedlike seats, improved in-flight entertainment, and new food options. And Delta and United have turned to celebrity chefs — Michelle Bernstein for Delta and Charlie Trotter for United — to create menus for its business- and first-class customers.

Of course, the airlines insist they have not completely abandoned the economy segment of the market. In fact, Delta and Continental are making their commitment to the average passenger the signature element of their new ad campaigns, with Delta adding individual television screens on all its coast-to-coast flights among other things and Continental rolling out video-on-demand systems on its trans-Atlantic flights. “We do a lot of work up front, but not at the expense of the back of the cabin,” said Eric Kleiman, the director of product marketing for Continental.

Image Credit... Ron Barrett

And some low-cost carriers are flying newer planes with better amenities like sleek leather seats, satellite television for each passenger and even, as in the case of JetBlue, removing seats to add legroom in coach.