What sucks is that it was about a $6,000 seat and he might have lost at least $500 for the refund fee. To upgrade to First on that flight, which I’m still not certain would fit him, would be about twice that.
I’m blessed such that I can fly Business or First transocean, for work and pleasure. Despite being 5’5" and 125 pounds, I really need the extra space due to both mild claustrophobia and the fact I need to move around a bit in my seat to get comfortable, due to joint and muscle pain issues. It sucks getting old.
The last time I flew Coach across an ocean was 3 years ago, packed into the middle seat of 5 on a 747, due to a project manager who didn’t buy tickets in time and Business was sold out. Not only was I so cramped that I could barely walk when I exited the plane, but there was an incident when the passenger to my left groped me several times during the flight (something which happens to women who are packed into economy with no husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/escort).
You’re right. You are a kind person. =) I’m 6’2" and only 235# now, but 20 years ago I got all the way up to 307#! I still fit in a regular airplane seat, but I can still understand the frustrations and struggles that obese people face.
s
Southwest, my favorite airline by far, just redesigned the interiors of their fleet of 737-700s. It looks nice, but they don’t like to mention that in redesigning the interior, they also managed to squeeze in an additional row of seats!
As much as I love Southwest, I hate that you can’t purchase a particular seat position or an upgraded seat. Delta is my backup airline when I need to fly somewhere that Southwest doesn’t fly direct from Atlanta (or fly to at all). I LOVE their ComfortPlus upgrade on most flights. It has larger, more comfortable seats, several more inches of legroom, free drinks, priority boarding and it only costs $49-$89 per flight depending primarily on the duration of the flight. I would gladly pay $40-50 per segment on Southwest just for another 2" of seat width and 2" of legroom!
I recently flew from Atlanta to Los Angeles to visit my cousin for 10 days. On my return flight I didn’t get my usual Exit Row seat, so I was stuck in seat with limited legroom for my 6’2" frame (34" inseam, so I have long legs, which sucks). My right knee was jammed against the seat-back tray hinge on the seat in front of me and the person in that seat suddenly decided to RECLINE! It hurt like a sonofabitch and I barked “Goddammit” before I could catch myself. It obviously offended several folks around me and I made it a point to apologize to them. But the recliner in front of me didn’t budge, so I leaned forward and asked them to please remove their seat from my knee cap. It was a middle-aged woman who gruffly replied “No, I can recline if I want.” I made eye contact with her spouse/companion/warden sitting beside her and it was CLEAR from the look I gave him that she WOULD be moving that seat!
When the flight attendant came by a few minutes later, I let her know what was going on and asked if she could assist in a diplomatic way before I had to handle it myself. She recognized me from my many, many flights on Southwest and told me she had an idea. A moment later her voice came over the intercom and she asked that because we were a packed flight and it appeared that there were even more tall guys on board than usual, could everyone please refrain from reclining. It didn’t work!
I was beyond pissed at this point, but my job requires me to fly so I had to use some restraint. I couldn’t risk ending up on the no-fly list or having an altercation in flight that made the news. So I decided to do what every brat that has sat behind me has done to my seat…I started slamming my size 13" hard-soled Kenneth Coles into the back of her seat repeatedly. I heard her say that she wasn’t moving the seat back upright no matter what I did, to which I responded in a low voice that she would moving it if I had to kick the damn seat loose from the floor. I kicked so hard at one point that I think I actually caused it to release and go back to the upright position. When that happened, the guy sitting next to me helped me to block her from reclining it again.
My flight attendant came by a few moments later and whispered to me asking if I finally had it resolved. I gave her a brief rundown on what might have occured, hypothetically, and then I said, “Don’t you think it’s time for tray tables to go up and seats to return to the full upright position to prepare for landing.” She gave me a smile and knowing wink and said she’d take care of it. Despite being 80 minutes out from Atlanta, she announced that the captain had just turned on the fasten seatbelts sign and all seats had to remain upright for the duration of the flight!
When we deplaned, the bitch actually wanted to have it out with me in the terminal. She was standing in my path and I simply walked by her kneeing her out of my way (she was blocking me, after all). I hope she fell into the baggage carousel and was never seen again!!!
I know that airlines have reduced seat widths in order to fit in more paying customers, but I wonder if it actually has the opposite effect: basically make people hate flying so much that the airlines, in the end, actually get fewer customers?
On narrow body aircraft there have been 6 seats on Boeings since the 707. Seat width has actually increased since the aisles have gotten narrower.
Airbus only makes one width of narrow-body airplane as well, and it has always had 6 seats. Same story; no changes.
McDonnell Douglas aircraft have been 5-abreast since the original DC9 in 1962. No changes there.
On some widebody aircraft there have been changes in seat width. But it’s mostly been in the direction of wider, not narrower.
Now thickness fore-and-aft of seats has been declining rapidly. And spacing between seats fore/aft has also been decreasing, but some of what you read about “seat pitch” getting closer is a result of thinner seats closer together leaving the same airspace between them. Not all, but some.
I’m back to finish my previous post whereat I ran out of time earlier today. And in the spirit of full disclosure …
RJs come in 3 main flavors now: Bombardier’s, Embraer’s older models (-135, -140, & -145), and Embraer’s newer models (-175 and up). Each of these 3 flavors has always been the width they are. But the older Embraers with 3-abreast seating are particularly narrow per seat. The Bombardier’s 4-abreast is a bit wider per seat, but less than Boeing’s standard. IIRC the new Embraers are 4-abreast with Boeing standard
seat width.
So to the degree folks’ travels have changed from Boeing, McD-D, & Airbus narrow-bodies to older RJs, then yes, they’ve experienced seats getting narrower left-right in addition to closer fore-aft spacing and lessened headroom to boot.
And thank you! We really do appreciate it.
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You’re most welcome. :rolleyes:
But isn’t there a more equitable way to do this? People of length, girth or both don’t want to intrude on others space. And they would also like to be somewhat comfortable. Or at the very least not in pain.
Folks in economy class bitch that there is somebody big next to them. The big person bitches that upgrades are either not available or absolutely out of reach $$$$ wise.
I am in a favorable position in my financial health to upgrade when it is available. Only though if it’s not a completely absurd price. I do not subject myself to voluntary robbery.
I just arrived on a 14 hour Detroit to Shanghai flight yesterday. Knowing that I’m tall and unwilling to pay for business class, I paid the extra $150 or $200 (whatever it is) for Economy Comfort. Apparently the other two, 6’2”+ broad shouldered guys that I shared the row with were equally conscientious, and it was a perfect storm that the three of us ended up squeezed together for this long flight in non-base seating.
It was still better than base class, as there was plenty of knee and leg room.
The airlines know they need X$ per take off/ landing to keep the shareholders happy.
Say an airline has 7 flights per day to the same city. Couldn’t they offer an experimental flight, maybe one a day on a flight with comfortable seating for 95% of the travelers. Take out some rows, and some seats. Keep the first class for those who like leather and service, and the rest are wide, with leg room and comfortable. Sure less seats, but they price it to have the X$ to make it profitable. Maybe it would catch on?
Or would the different reconfiguration of the plane make it very expensive for this experiment?
Instead of cramming the most seats they can, offer a plane that is comfortable. Would people pay for this? I would.
Here are two threads from the last few months which aren’t exactly about this, but which have relevant digressions:
The punnchline is that the incremental cost is vastly more than the incremental “I want a bigger seat” customer is wiling to pay. So far. But that may be changing a bit.
How many times have you purchased a business class or premium economy class ticket with your own money?
All:
Does anyone know what, on average, the area ratio is between domestic economy vs domestic business class? As in, if a given area can hold 100 domestic business class seats, roughly how many domestic economy class seats can we expect it to hold?
Yes, I know that classes aren’t standard across all airlines, especially business class. If comparisons can only be made within individual airlines, that can still give us a ballpark idea.
I’d humbly suggest that equally as important as comfort is time. While a comfort priced plane may well work; it’s going to be hampered by the restrictive Ness of schedules.
Unless maybe you could seduce it to coincide with business travellers?
There’s not really such a thing as “domestic business class.” To be sure, the thing we call “first class” (“FC”) on domestic is similar to international business class. The vast majority of domestic flying is on narrow-body aircraft. There is a small percentage of domestic long haul that’s flown using international-configured wide-bodies, or aircraft that used to be international until the luxo-standards of non-coach international were raised and the airplane, unmodified, was demoted to domestic long haul.
For domestic narrow-body, we first have the issue of 4 versus 6 seats abreast. That’s easy to figure; about 150% more space per seat. The FC aisle is typically a smidgen wider, so maybe 140% would be a better factor.
Using my calibrated fingers to measure on my screen, I see the three rows of FC, including the legroom ahead of the first row, take up the same length as 4 rows of conventional coach, including the including the legroom ahead of the first row. IOW 4 abreast x 3 rows = 12 FC seats take up the same saleable floor space as 6 abreast x 4 rows = 24 coach seats. So that’s roughly a 2:1 ratio.
I WAG that they could remove the FC & extended-legroom coach and replace it all with conventional coach and increase seating by two rows. So it’d be 6 abreast x 26 rows = 162 people. A configuration of all extended-legroom coach would be around 6 x 23 rows = 138 people. And a configuration of all FC would be about 4 abreast x 19 rows = 76 people.
An interesting idea would be to switch to 5-abreast seating. This would solve most of the “person of size” issues. Couple that with all extended legroom coach = 5 x 23 = 115 people. The whining would stop, but folks would have to be willing to pay about 160% of what they do now; that airplane holds 150 as configured by Delta and that includes the premium they get for the FC & extended-legroom coach seats.
The situation is even worse on the RJs. They have especially narrow (& hence whine-inducing) seats. But from 3-abreast to 2-abreast is a 33% reduction in seats or a 50% increase in space & fare per seat. 4-abreast going to three is better, but it’s still a huge hit.
One real world issue that gets in the way of my ideal packing described above is the over-wing exits. They are where they are, and the rows immediately adjacent to them must be where they are. In fact you can’t even put the serious luxo first class or international business class seats there because they’d interfere with the exits.
As you can see, the legroom in the diagram’s rows 10 & 11 is actually greater than that in FC. So in effect you have those two rows anchored where they are, then two separate cabins to fill; one ahead of them and one behind. The end result is often the Legos don’t fit so good and you lose a whole row’s worth of seats; nobody can sit in the residual 1/2 pitch interval that’s left over.
I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll say it again here: The airline industry is in two businesses simultaneously: commodity transportation for price-is-everything shoppers and comfy travel for the price-is-priority-three-or-four crowd. The former is 40 to 80 percent of the passengers, depending on the city-pair involved. Overall it’s about 75% price-is-everything shoppers. Each group subsidizes the other, albeit in different ways.
The expensive tickets make possible the cheapest-of-cheap tickets. And the cheap tickets make possible the frequency of flights, abundance of good connections, and the availability of surge capacity for major conventions and such.
Given that industry profit margins are about 2% in a good year and are negative overall since the inception of air travel, there’s not a lot of room for slack. Said another way, the ability to fill that extra row they cram in there is *not *the key to profitability. The ability to fill the *last 2 seats in that row *is the difference between profit and loss.
No, it’s a story about an entitled jerk passenger who demanded her “right” to crush the the knees of Beelzebubba*, and then later tried to pick a fight in the baggage area, because she didn’t get her way.
Yep, it was a cool story.
*OK full disclosure. I think Bbubba was kind of annoying, showing off the “insider connection” with the crew. Comes across a bit smug. But not as bad as the woman in front.
I’m almost convinced this is another Doper Tall Tale, because I cannot imagine an adult being proud of acting this way. It was in fact her right to recline the seat, and your beef is with Southwest or your genetics, not her. What if her back hurt, or she was handicapped, and needed to recline some? You have no idea why she wanted to recline her seat, but you willingly and knowingly purchased a ticket on a plane where you, Mr. Big Shot Experienced Traveler, knew the seat configuration.
So instead you mad-dog her husband/companion, act like a spastic 5-year-old, and then “knee” her out of the way, because you’re a Big Man[sup]TM[/sup] with “size 13” feet, and that’s what people like you do…what?
And your “kneeing her out of (your) way” is called assault. If you tried that stunt in real life with me you would find yourself having long and meaningful talks with the airport and municipal police, because I would press charges.
I am a very obese woman and no, I don’t smell bad, and no, I don’t get up and disturb my seatmates. I choose a window seat and shrink into the window well as far as possible and I remain there for the duration. I do plan to buy two seats for future longer trips, although I am concerned about keeping the other person out of the extra one!
I can see that having buyers. Which tends to be most desired, more width for elbows/fat or more length for legs/reclining?
As an alternative, how about benches, perhaps in parallel orientation to the fuselage? The disadvantage of breaking up seating area into discrete seats is that some people use less than a full seat and others use more. In a bench arrangement, especially parallel to the fuselage, those cancel each other out to some degree.
Short of some unorthodox arrangement like stacked beds, hexagonal seats or semi-vertical stacking, the optimal people-fitting arrangement is the same as is used to fit as many grunts as possible in a 2.5-ton truck or APC (e.g.: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/APC_Interior.jpg ). That arrangement seems to work well enough in some buses, subways (e.g.: http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/subway-5.jpg but with a lot less legroom) and churches (except that they’re perpendicular benches).
I realize that some issues related to this would have to be managed. You’re better able to assess them and how surmountable they would be. Also, parallel benches might not pass safety regs.
I’ve wondered about that. It seems like the barrier to entry would be fairly high and the product is useful so how come profits are so low?
Was it higher t before the advent of Internet comparison shopping? I don’t mean pre-80s deregulation as I understand that profitability was indeed higher then because of gov’t policies.
Is the low profitability because operating an airline is prestigious which results in oversupply?
