What's an OP? Yes, paying $20 for something I never paid for before, didn't even know about it except for exit row, which is understandable - if you are tall the economy seating would be torture. Before, I just picked the seat when I booked, always. I usually book months in advance, so that might be why I never knew about this. I just thought that Qantas had suddenly changed the rules to gouge more money out of people for no real reason, I suppose. Anyway, I have read all the comments, and I suppose I am just not as diligent as I used to be when booking airfares; things have changed a lot recently..... it is probably the beginning of the end of the era of mass air-travel, another 20 years and there will be a lot of unused mega-airports around the world I expect.
OP = Original Poster (as in the person that posted the first post in the thread).
Passenger numbers are not expected to do anything but go up. With the rise and rise of LCC's (low cost carriers), the whole a la carte thing is growing. Jetstar is following this method and they're (unfortunately!) getting big. The future will be buy a seat, then add on everything else like Ryanair.
There will be a place for the full service carrier, but it's going to be a lot smaller than the days of luxury air travel gone by unfortunately