Let’s assume that an airline operating Boeing 737s (e.g., 737-800) has 33 rows of seats in Economy class. ‘Seat Pitch is the distance from any point on one seat to the exact same point on the seat in front or behind it.’ Seat pitch for Economy class on U.S. carriers is about 30 to 32 inches.
How many inches is seat pitch increased for each row of seats removed?
How many rows would have to be removed to increase the pitch to 34 inches? 36 inches?
I did find one site that said increasing pitch would only require the removal of one or two rows to get to 34 inches, but I’d like other opinions.
Said another way, if you have 33 rows & also 33" pitch, removing one row increases the room available by 1/33 rows = 3%. So that means you gain about 3% of 33" per row = 1".
If you had an airplane with 66 rows of 33" pitch you’d gain 1/2" per row. And if you had an airplane with 66" pitch on 33 rows you’d gain about 2".
Given that the industry as a whole makes about a 2% profit margin when fuel prices are low, and loses a few percent when fuel prices are high, you can see why changing capacity by even a single row = 3% plus or minus is a big deal.
Well, elementary math. If you remove one row leaving 33 and the pitch is 32 inches, you add slightly less than 1 inch per row. Of course, the wing exit row may be slightly longer and does not really need to move much. SO essentially they’d have to remove one row ahead and one row behind the wing exit row to avoid moving it (approx. the middle row) to the wrong place half-way in front of the window.
Yeah. Galleys, lavs, and exit doors make it more complex than simply a long tube you can subdivide evenly.
Class dividers are generally movable, but adding a row of first class means you need to remove a one and a half rows of coach. Which really means two rows of coach.
I notice people are using 32 inch pitch. Suppose you have 30-inch pitch? It sounds like removing three rows would do the trick. Nine percent of the seating, right?
LSLGuy points out that the industry as a whole makes about 2% when fuel prices are low. The purpose of this thread is not to suggest that airlines are ‘greedy’ . (I was already aware of the thin profit margins.) I’m thinking of posting a poll to ask whether people would be willing to pay an extra X% for more space, and I wanted to find out what percentage of seats would need to be removed to achieve 34- to 36-inch pitch.
You ought to be aware that the poll likely won’t be reliable. It’s much easier to say you’d pay X% more for more space than it is to actually shell out that money.
We already know what people prefer. Even with all the bitching about air travel and the possibility of paying more for more comfort, the vast majority just pick the cheapest ticket.
No, I want a factual answer that includes explanations (as given by people who have posted), rather than just take the word of some site that simply says it’s so.
Industry experience to date is that there is a small market for larger seat pitch. But at the price necessary to break even on providing the extra space it’s down around 10% of the market. Hence the current various branded offerings of an extra couple inches in the first, say, 15% of coach rows. The 10% vs 15% disconnect is to enable the industry to provide a fairly low-cost, high-perceived-value perk to the frequent fliers who keep us in business.
I think a lot of people would really prefer more width over more length in their seat space. The problem is that with narrow-body 6 abreast seating, going to 5 abreast is removing 18% of capacity per row. Which is too large an increment in cost and hence price for the market to bear.
Speaking just for me, I find the extra couple of inches of width in an A320-series cabin to be much nicer than the couple inches less width in a 727 / 737 / 757 cabin. And I’m slender. Boeing is starting the market research for whatever will replace the 757 and later the 737. One hopes they will not perpetuate the obsolete fuselage diameter originally chosen in the late 1940s for the 707.
To add to the complexity, some airlines have been advertising removed rows for more legroom, but the pitch is not uniformly increased. American, for example, left the pitch alone in most of the rows, and concentrated the extra legroom in selected rows which are available for a slight fee. I think the fee is usually $15 per flight.
Pitch also isn’t exactly the same as legroom. The space taken up by the seat itself is included in the pitch, so if you make the seat take up less space you can increase legroom without reducing pitch, or keep legroom the same while reducing pitch.
Yep. In fact much of the decrease in pitch in the last 10 years on mainline carriers has been entirely due to thinner seats with legroom being unchanged. Not that you’ll ever hear that from outraged “consumer advocates”.
To be sure there are bargain carriers who’ve done both: put in the thinnest available seats *and *shrink the legroom between them. Which is how they can get pitch numbers that sound torturous compared to pre-Deregulation 707s.
I pay for Economy Comfort (or whatever Delta brands it these days), especially on trans-Pacific flights. On my last round trip, it was about a 10% premium, and completely worth it. (Back when I still had Platinum status, these were free to me.)
Here in China there’s no economy comfort, but first class is dirt cheap so that’s my normal choice.
Yeah, being 6’2" and 245# makes the ‘standard’ economy seat rather confining for more than 90-minutes or so. I fly from ATL to LAX every few months to visit my cousin and I’ve almost had to fight for an Exit Row seat on Southwest. One time, I actually tossed my laptop bag from about four rows away and it landed right in the seat I wanted…thankfully, those Dell Latitude laptops are as durable as they claim to be! =)
But I would gladly pay up to a 20% premium ($60-70, at most) for a few inches of additional legroom and possibly even an inch of extra shoulder room for a cross-country flight!