Why do they call it “Coach”?
Being a coach has some prominence no matter if its just small town fame and free meals for being the High School coach, or the multimillion dollar contracts for college and professional sports.
Why did they name the sardine packing section of the airplane after such a cool, and sometimes very lucrative job?
It’s because a coach is also the name for a type of carriage or train car.
It’s unrelated to coaching as a job.
In the old days, people traveled by stage coach. Wealthy people got to ride inside the “coach”, but the poor had to ride on top, in the rain, wind, and snow.
When better travel, such as railroads and steamships, came along, coach was still a better class, despite there no longer being a coach, since the poor would go to worse accommodations (Think “steerage” in the movie Titanic).
When air travel arrived, economy became “Coach” because everyone was flying in luxury. Because you can’t strap people to the outside, and plane cabins were small.
The wealthy and powerful, however, didn’t like rubbing elbows with the common people, so a new, even higher, class was created for them “First Class”.
Over time, the idea of “Coach” being high class accommodations disappeared from public consciousness and became, instead, developing a negative connotation. So airlines rebranded their “Coach” sections as “economy”.