By the same token, since when has acceptance and accommodation given people a reason to change?
Exactly. The narrowing trick really works with the long-distance widebodies to net a few more seats across. Especially Boeings, which Airbus seems unhappy with, probably less out of concern for the quality-of-flight experience than, I absolutely speculate here, because the mounting rails on their already-flying stock may not be as easily adaptable to cramming more seats across (I just don’t believe in the goodness of the corporate heart…).
One of the newer developments that applies to both large and midsized planes is seats that have shallower seatback frames and cushions to begin with, so they occupy less linear space front to back so you can put more rows in the same length of cabin while maintaining a given nominal pitch – which they will not, what are you thinking? The new seats tend to do the “recline” by having the whole installation sort of slide into a slouch rather than just the seatback tilting, AND not as many total degrees anyway, so they need less pitch. But even with conventional seats some airlines seem to have already limited the recline to a lesser angle to allow closer pitch.
Spirit (again) announced last year their new planes will feature “pre-reclined” seats – i.e. just bolted at a couple degrees’ tilt, AND already put them at 28 inch pitch – 3 inches less than the US domestic norm.
Everyone’s talking about the rant against the big guy, but what really pegged the ranter as an asshole to me was his sexist bullshit regarding the flight attendants.
[QUOTE=Asshole]
I didn’t catch the names of the three flight attendants, but for the purpose of this letter, I’ll call them: Chatty 1, Chatty 2 and Giggly (I’ve given them all the same surname - Couldnotgiveash***).
After my request, Chatty 1 and Chatty 2 continued their conversation, presumably about how s*** they are at their jobs, and Giggly, well, she just giggled. I then asked if I could sit in one of the six vacant seats at the back of the aircraft, to which Giggly responded, “hehehe, they’re for crew only, hehehe”. I think Giggly may be suffering from some form of mental impairment.
[/QUOTE]
There’s more hyperbole but they still probably immediately pegged him as a whiny jerk.
That’s horrific.
I’m sorry, I’m not getting the reference. What’s “SBD’s” and why did you lean over this guy’s lap?
Edit to add, what the hell is it with all the stories of Americans on the Daily Mail? Not just celebrities (I’d like to see their paparazzi budget) but regular people too. Don’t British people get beat up, killed, disappeared, have car crashes and fires?
I think you may have misread. I leaned away from him. He had it coming and was warned.
Silent But Deadly, AKA The Green Misma
[hijack]
I believe some other Tabs may have got the native-British Yob adventures beat cornered.
So the USA is to the Daily Mail as Florida is to most American news outlets. They just scan the web news sites for the inevitable idiocy to pop up.
Can you cite (with actual data) the airlines making a huge profit? Because most of them have been drowning in debt and forced into mergers to survive.
Here’s a list of the 427 airlines that went bankrupt.
Maybe it’s the cheap-ass public who buys the absolute rock bottom tickets that drove us into the current state of sardine airways we’ve come to know and despise.
I’ve never accused the Airlines of making a big profit.
Shaving a inch off the already tight seats won’t solve their operating costs. All it does is piss off their aggravated passengers even more. The change in flying in the past 20 years is pretty depressing. A lot of it can be blamed on the TSA and new security. But there’s also the Airlines attitude at fault too. Leaving planes full of passengers on the tarmac for hours at a time.
Dragging drunk or unruly passengers off the planes. Airlines routinely dealt with those types of passengers for 50 years and almost never resorted to calling the cops. Now it’s standard procedure to throw all kinds of Federal charges at them. Just for being a obnoxious, drunk a-hole on the plane. That really endears them to their customers.
They’re breaking every conceivable rule of customer service and they wonder why their profits are down?
I said earlier that I will drive my car within a 350 mile radius and avoid flying. I only fly when it’s the only practical method of getting somewhere that’s too far to drive.
Ah, not knowing what SBDs were, the way read it you were leaning over his lap to reach toward his other side. For some reason. Now I get it, but it gave me a really weird mental picture at first.
Thanks JRDelirious and The Vorlon.
Because my dear Watson: as the general population gets fatter and fatter, the airlines have to increase the aisle width in order to accommodate the extra large people. Imagine if during an emergency evacuation an obese person stumbles and falls or gets lodged in a narrow aisle? It would be disastrous, to the point of seriously endangering other passengers.
The sad reality is that the proposed solution for obese people to just buy an extra seat is not fair. It doesn’t properly compensate healthy people whose seats must be shrank to accommodate the obese in the aisles.
The other problem is that most search engines for airline tickets allow you to rank flights by price or flight duration or connecting stops. They don’t allow an easy comparison of seat width/spacing to determine comfort level bang for the buck. Once search engines start displaying this info then I suspect airlines will start making more money by selling economy seats that are objectively ranked better by users. Some airlines offer a few “economy plus” on some international flights. Unfortunately their benefits and value is not clearly compared to all the options.
I wonder the same thing when I hear complaints like that. Clearly my SO fits, he’s 5’9" and 135. I’m 5’7", 165 (down from 175) and I’ve never been uncomfortable because of the seat. Uncomfortable from sitting for 4-6 hours? Sure. But not from a seat that is too small.
you said they were greedy. at this point in time I’d be impressed if they just made a profit let alone a big profit. The “few inches” they took out makes room for additional seats for the cattle crowd. If you want some leg room then spend an extra $1000 and enjoy the ride.
I know it sucks but cheap airfare comes at a price to creature comfort.
I’m not going to chase them, but there’s several posters who have asserted things around the lines of “you can always pay more for more space”.
No I can’t damnit, every time I’ve flown with a cheapo it has been because any “big name” company either flew at times which would have been unacceptable to my manager/customers or had several stages; often both. Barcelona to Amsterdam to Frankfurt to Edinburgh areyoukiddingme? It wasn’t a matter of cheaper, it was a matter of not wanting to spend half the fucking week in transit. Maybe “pay more, get a bigger seat” is possible in the US, but not everywhere - not at all.
This is false. The shrinkage is being done because on widebody planes, it allows an extra seat to be added per row, which increases the airline’s per-flight revenue. Aisle widths have also become smaller - but the FAA does have a minimum width requirement for them, so the airlines can’t go below that minimum.
The airlines don’t care about that. (And you should note that the obese aren’t the only ones who could hold up an evacuation in such a way - anyone who’s physically infirm could do so.). Before a particular plane configuration can be approved by the FAA, the airline must show that the plane when full is capable of being completely evacuated in undr 90 seconds. But in the tests they only use reasonably healthy people: no elderly, no physically disabled or mobility impaired, no morbidly obese, no very young children. And of course in the test everyone participating speaks English fluently, and no one has taken a couple of Ambien or had a few drinks too many before the test begins. So the safety test is unrealistic. (That’s why I was critical of the current seat pitch earlier; certainly when I fly I see quite a few people, particularly the elderly, who struggle to get in and out of the seats because of the narrow pitch).
And that in a nutshell is the issue: in the obsessive quest to keep ticket prices low, the airlines have configured their planes in a manner which is increasingly a mismatch for what the general public actually needs.
This is another good point. Also in many cases YOU may be able to pay for a bigger seat, but YOU are not paying for the flight: your company or your client is, and they will only cover the cost of one coach ticket. Sometimes these “choices” are more theoretical than actual, which libertarian types don’t always appreciate.