Nilay Patel (I'm gonna get this slightly wrong) has this story where he was talking to an airline CEO about standing-only tickets and the guy said "I know two things. If we did standing-only tickets we'd get roasted by the public, and those tickets would need the most popular tickets by far."
This was RyanAir's CEO. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/28/ryanair-sta...