Le Journal

Josephine, The Gallerist and The Brittney Griner Story are among the Sundance narrative features and documentaries attracting early awards attention.

On Delta and other legacy carriers, add-ons like sitting closer to the front of the cabin or aisle seats are considered premiums. | Shelby Knowles/Bloomberg via Getty Images Perhaps it’s the natural human inclination toward nosiness, but people are always interested in what others are and aren’t buying. Those purchases always invite some kind of judgment, comparison, envy, desire to stay on trend, or some combination of all of the above. What people buy is often a reflection of a bigger picture about how we live and the things we find important.  And one thing that Americans really buy is a window seat.  This past month, Delta Air Lines announced that it closed 2025 with a $5 billion profit and is expecting to see a 5 percent growth in revenue in early 2026. One of the main drivers, according to the airline, was a “growing demand for our premium products.” The revenue for premium products grew 7 percent compared to 2025, and they generated more revenue than main cabin tickets in the final three months of the year. Rival airline United also announced that it had beat earnings expectations and, similarly, that its premium revenue was up 9 percent year over year.  As a person who spent a tiny fortune flying a few times last year, it’s not really a surprise to see airlines report that they had successfully taken my money. What’s annoying, if entertaining, though, is watching their generous use of words like “premium” and “upgrade” to refer to things like being able to pick a seat when you buy your ticket, selecting an aforementioned window seat, checking bags, and getting full credit with cancellation — up-charges that were, once upon a time, all part of regular, non-“premium” air travel.  Avoiding boarding with Zone 8 and not sitting nose-distance from a toilet for the entirety of the flight are now, allegedly, luxury experiences that we have all bought into. And with our money in their hands, airlines are promising (threatening?) to think of more ways to add premium features to our flights.  Great.  In an attempt to sift through the corporatese and complain about the current state of air travel, I spoke to experts about what this premium-speak all means and where all these up-charges seem to be headed. What I am sorry to report is that airlines have gotten really good at making us pay for things that used to be free, and that many of us can’t help but buy in.  How airlines beat customers at their own game One thing I learned from speaking to business school professors about airlines is that airline pricing is one thing that business school professors enthusiastically examine. When consumers like me complain but still pay more for window seats and to board in a manner that doesn’t feel like one of those dystopian YA novels where children from varying districts rush in and bludgeon each other to death, business experts see it as a case study.  They want to know how, if consumers bemoan these up-charges so much, airlines still get away with it. They want to look at what a company like Delta does with the tremendous amount of consumer information (demand, price points, sunk costs, etc.) at its disposal.  “Airline pricing is a classic case that we teach in our core microeconomics courses in the MBA program and at most business schools,” Brett House, an economics professor at Columbia Business School, told me. “There is a great deal of flexibility to segment and version and unbundle the flying experience. And airlines are able to collect data on consumers’ responsiveness to those moves in ways that allow them to optimize that for their revenue and profit.” Lounge access (even if they are increasingly more full), credit cards, and loyalty programs are all ways that airlines make ticket-buying feel like a competition. | Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images" /> There are very few businesses, if…

A lot of great TV shows debuted and returned in 2025 ... but we're here to talk about the worst TV shows of the year.

Now that all four teasers (so far) for "Avengers: Doomsday" have been released, has the unusual marketing strategy paid off? It doesn't look like it.