12 thoughts on “One Size Doesn’t Fit All”

  1. Nowhere in the article is any mention made of the real problem with airline seats (in common with most theaters): the shared armrest. If human beings had only one arm and shoulder, always on the same side, it would make sense. In this world, it doesn’t. If I were to go into the airliner business, I’d make fuselages 8 inches wider, just enough so that each coach seat could have an armrest, but no airline would be able to cram in another seat across. I’d be willing to bet it would be the all-time best seller.

    Surprisingly, I seem to be the only person on earth who thinks this way. When I mention it to anyone, I just get a blank stare…like you’re giving right now.

    1. All other things being the same, a wider fuselage is going to have more drag, making the plane less fuel efficient. Of course, there are ways to address that but airlines wouldn’t be interested if it cost the more money. Convincing them that the planes will be more popular with passengers would be a hard sell. They don’t care because they don’t have to care.

    2. Interesting strategy about the 8″ wider jet.

      Consider the BAe 146 short hall jet (it kinda preceded the Bombardier and Embraear Regional Jets — what ever happened to the ‘146? Were they all sold to Iran or something?)

      It had a kind of ‘tween fuselage width, and I remember being crammed 6 across in it but it was probably designed for only 5. So just because the extra 8″ doesn’t allow an extra seat across doesn’t mean some airline is going to try.

      Consider next the Airbus A320. One of the selling points is that it is at least “a couple inches” wider than its closest competitor, one of the stretched Boeing 737 models. I don’t recall being on an Airbus and going “ah, this is comfy” and then boarding a Boeing and saying, “forget this!”

      The only jet that I consider any kind of improvement is the 5-across DC-9/MD-80/717 series, especially if you can sit on the 2-across side. Even on the 3-across side it feels like an improvement for some reason.
      I am just under 6’ (5’11”, 5’11” and change, depending how straight I stand when they measure my height at my doctor’s visit), and I kinda just about fit in the scrunched seats, but anyone bigger than me I can see is in a world of hurt. But I don’t think it is just the seats, I think it is the whole ‘tude of the airline industry.

      This business of charging for checked baggage. That I can pile the car “full of stuff” is a reason to drive and forgo any of the modes of public transportation, and by public transportation, a plane has gotten to be just another kind of bus.

      Back in the day, what you could take in the cabin was severely restricted because there was no overhead bin, and everyone stood around at the baggage carousel. Then “they” not only introduced overhead bins but it was a strong marketing point in airline advertising that you could “carry on”, which was a huge sales point because the quality of checked luggage service was regarded to be that bad. Checked luggage was so bad from the standpoint of loss-and-damage, forget the extra half hour spent standing to retrieve it, that the carry-on space was overwhelmed (this feature the airline told you made your travel experience was so great, but it made up for their inability to handle checked luggage securely).

      So now they charge for checked bags. Except for Southwest, which is an altogether different kind of outside-the-First-World cultural experience. So I say “forget this”, I don’t check anything and I don’t even try to (fight other passengers for) space in the overhead. You heard of ETOPS — Extended Twin (engine) Operations in Passenger Service, also translated “Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim?” My version of ETOPS is “Expect The Passengers (to) Smell (on the return trip without fresh clothes.”

      OK, taking “your stuff” costs coin — for the baggage loaders, displacing freight, the extra fuel incurred by the load. Charging for baggage is strictly the market economy at work. Yeah, so there will now be a charge to use the “head” in flight? Operating the lav costs money too, and if they could remove lavs from the jet (I heard there is a new slimline loo to do just that), they could put in more seats?

      Even having a chance to survive your flight incurs a fee. Most people seem to give the airplane safety drill no attention, people don’t want to even think about it because they think in a crash they have no chance. When the short-runway triple-flapped 727 came out, there were a lot of crumped planes by crews transitioning from propliners with different sink rates. I remember it as if it were yesterday of the Chicago Tribune relating one accident where everyone died from staying in their seats and inhaling smoke, and the only two survivors were two persons at the emergency exits with the presence of mind to get out.

      Good luck sitting in an Exit Row because that is something that incurs a fee. So the people crammed into the exit row are not there because they are particularly consciencious about safety, and when asked the obligatory question about whether they are physically able to follow crew orders to operate the door, they just give a perfunctory grunt. They. like most others, don’t even want to think about the risks of flying because they are scared and denial is how people deal with risk. They are there because they paid coin for the couple inches extra leg room.

      Why the “seat rage”? Because we all hate to fly and we are on the ragged edge of lawful conduct when we board.

  2. I booked a flight on two 747s to Istanbul that was supposed to transfer in NYC. It was snowed in so I ended up transferring to a 727 in some country? for the final leg. I didn’t fit in the seat but had to pretend to while standing for the entire flight. I used to be a really big guy. Now I’m just a big guy.

  3. When I used to ride in Beechcraft and Navajo aircraft up in Alaska, nine and seven passengers, respectively, it was not unknown for the flight crew to move passengers around, to balance the aircraft. Creating larger seats for some, distributing them properly around the aircraft, and making sure they were actually used by said larger people, might help a little with balancing the larger aircraft, though admittedly it is not that much of a problem the larger the aircraft is.

    But I think Rand’s instincts are right on this – it is not likely practical, for all sorts of legal, social, and technical reasons. To start with, people will immediately start lying about height and weight to get the bigger seats. If airlines start charging more for the seats, in order to prevent some of this, well, let forth the dogs of law.

    The thing is, airline seating has evolved the way it has because we only look at price when selecting flights. We need an airline to start competing on comfort levels and find a way to reflect that in Expedia and the other sites. Maybe Premium Economy (which, a long, long time ago, is what we called First Class) is the beginning of the answer.

  4. Personally, I say get rid of the armrests. Or at least move towards a bench type seating. Is there a legal/safety reason to keep them?

    1. I don’t think there’s a legal or safety reason for armrests. However, that’s where they put the recline button and earphone jack on most planes. I usually do use the armrest, if for no other reason than to keep the obese person sitting next to me from crowding my space.

  5. The passenger packing-density in the commercial airliner is driven by the need of the airline to cover expenses and make a profit while competing for customers in a highly price-sensitive marketplace. The major expense is fuel, and because of the policies of this administration, those costs have, as promised, “necessarily skyrocketed.”

    You want low-cost airfare and low passenger-packing-density? You don’t have to redesign the airplane, or the seats–you just have to reduce the cost of fuel. And that can ultimately be done with a different administration. Could have been done in 2008. “Drill baby, Drill!”

  6. I’ve never had a problem with airline seating.. even when I weighed almost twice as much as I currently do.. and I fly long haul – 13 to 15 hours across the Pacific before 5 hours across the US. Americans are such whiners. Suck it up or pay for business/first class.

  7. My wife and I are both … um … wider than what the airline seats are designed for, and when we traveled together we would arrange seat assignments that simply didn’t include the middle seat — which because we were traveling together the airlines didn’t go to any trouble to fill. It worked more often than it ought to have done, leaving us with elbow room more honest travelers never enjoyed.

    Then we started booking first class whenever we could afford to (frequent-flyer miles we began accruing while living in Alaska but spending holidays in Tennessee every. damn. year.). If it weren’t for 21st-century security theater (and no-longer-free meals, and checked luggage service) (and the fact the family we spent holidays in Tennessee with now lives with us in Georgia) we might still be flying regularly.

  8. The problem might be resolved by not having seats? No I’m not suggesting strap-hangers. You have unused vertical space. Couches instead of seats. I want top!

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