I fly on an Americian Airlines RJ twice a week, used to be Embraers now CRJ 900. Three rows of one by two first class and I think 16 rows of two by two coach.
[quote=Joey]
How you doin?
[quote]
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Thank you for the informative post LSL. What sticks in my craw is that folks in economy are bitching that some big person got in a seat next to them. Well, look at YOUR seat price. People that do upgrade for ridiculous prices are subsidizing economy seats.
More people would upgrade if available, for a reasonable price. BUT that means that the economy seats are going to go up in price too. I’ll gladly ‘quit my bitchin’ when 20% more room doesn’t cost 100-500% more.
I don’t mind the extra cost of first class, but it’s often full (I often buy last minute or singe flights last minute). In fact, in sitting in a coach seat right now because I switched to an earlier flight. Everyone in my row is average size, but it’s still pretty close quarters. And hot, if I may start a tangent. It’s at least 85 degrees and people are getting restless. Why are planes always overheated?
[quote=“enipla, post:122, topic:733419”]
In my better years I’m Gold or Platinum (never Diamond) instead of near-useless Silver, and I’m almost always bumped up to first class. I’ve always assumed that most (but not all) of my fellow first class passengers were free/loyalty upgrades, too. I wonder if there’s any public data that suggests the actual ratio of paid vs. free first class riders?
Here in China domestic plane travel is quite cheap (as long as you’re paid in dollars), and upgrading to first class is often less than 25% of the economy fare. Asians are smaller in general, and seat pitch is definitely tighter than a standard US airline, making first class a no-brainer. First class domestic gets to use the lounges, too, unlike in the United States.
[quote=“enipla, post:122, topic:733419”]
I’ve been seeing more and more airlines offering “economy plus” or “even more room” (jet blue, which already has more legroom in economy) . The surcharge is usually something reasonable, $40-100, and I’ve sometimes bought it.
I don’t usually mind the width of seats, more because I don’t mind people close than because I am small. But I have long-ish legs, and knee problems that mean if I don’t move my legs around I get very sore. So from my perspective, airplanes have cut back on the space in economy in the dimension I care about.
I’m a little annoyed about having to pay extra to get it back, because when I fly for business my employer only reimburses the cheapest seat. 
Still, at least it’s an option.
When the pitch is tight, I start the trip by packing the seatback pocket with soft things like my bottle of water, so if the person in front of me reclines, I get a water bottle gradually pressing into my knees instead of the seat hitting me hard. I, too, disbelieve the cranky-baby story, mostly because I don’t believe the staff would back someone who was making a ruckus like that.
I flew with Ryanair once, a short time after they introduced premium seating with extra legroom. I paid the extra as I’d heard it was a terrible airline to fly with. No one else had paid the extra, so my aisle had a stewardess refusing ‘entry’ to everyone else. I had three seats and a bodyguard, all for an extra 11 Euros. Now that was a good deal.
Airlines need to be more flexible, though, with seating. I’ll always pay a little extra (but not 200%!) for more legroom, and would also prefer to pay extra for decent food and drinks. Although some people will always choose the cheapest, more airlines should offer more optional extras such as better refreshments and seats.
On my last flight you could buy as much booze as you wanted, for a premium, and pay extra for more comfortable seats. A shame the food was so bad but the multiple glasses of wine helped!
Interesting. I’ve never been upgraded for free. And in the US, many flights don’t have first class.
I do have a Frontier Airlines Master Card, and if I fly Frontier (a US Airline), I get discounts if I buy the flight on that card. No charge for checked baggage for instance. No cancelation charges. And even stretch seating for no extra cost.
However, Frontier Airlines doesn’t go everywhere I need to. On our next flight, stretch seating (5" more leg room which is 19% more than the conventional pitch) is costing about 90% more than economy.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen first class tickets that are only 25% more than economy. And yes indeed, that would be a no brainer. I did fly first class to Germany a few years ago, and since it was an international flight, we could use the lounges. Not sure if the same is true for domestic flights.
-
All galleys are always next to bathrooms. We put all the seats together and all the services together. Max efficient use of space that way.
-
Anything other than seats facing directly fore/aft is a total non-starter for safety regs. They’ve got to support you through some pretty amazing crash force standards.
As well, even if we could use bench seating along the side, that won’t allow people to take as much space as they individually need. Remember the seat belts would have to be installed every so often. And we’d deal with the issue of folks trying to make themselves wider by putting purses, laptop bags, etc. alongside themselves. The airline would still have some standard, e,.g. this 30 foot bench needs to hold 20 people at 18" per person. If folks tried to spread out, we’d just push them back together until 20 fit in the space, pudgy or skinny.
some of the food you can purchase on-board these days isn’t half bad.
FC is at least double the space, more on widebodies. So a 100% cost increment is just barely breakeven.
My experience with the extended-legroom coach is you get about 15-20% more space where it really matters, tailbone to kneecaps, at a cost of about 10-15% more floorspace in the aircraft.
More or less at random I just checked united.com for a flight from FLL (near me) to DEN (near you and a UAL hub) for about 5 weeks from now travelling midweek.
The cheapest unrestricted coach was $1020 round trip and the cheapest unrestricted FC round trip was $1100. Not much of an increment.
To be sure, there were discount round trip coach fares as low as $320. For no changes allowed, forfeit the fare if you don’t make the flight, etc. But since FC tickets don’t have those sorts of restrictions, it’s not intellectually honest to compare an unrestricted FC ticket with a restricted coach ticket. Compare like to like and it’s not that big an increment.
Their extended-legroom coach on those flights was a $44 increment over the coach fare. Which seemed to be $44 each way, not per segment, although I wasn’t 100% sure about that. So it’s about a 20% increment on the ultra-discount fare and about an 8% increment on the unrestricted coach fare.
That’s admittedly a sample of one and if I was to try again in half an hour the numbers would all be different.
The bottom line truth here is the industry is experimenting with the extended-legroom coach concept. It was tried back in the 90s and flopped totally. People loved it when they got on the plane, but had no idea that it existed before then and certainly weren’t willing to pay a nickel more for it.
The difference now (I think) is the advent of websites where people are buying the seat online and can be exposed to the advertising/marketing that the feature even exists. Back when people telephoned travel agents to buy tickets this info just didn’t get to them or didn’t sink in.
As consumers, your collective purchase decisions will drive whether extended legroom (or maybe even a small section with fewer, wider seats) grows or goes away.
One thing’s for sure: these are semi-premium offerings that won’t ever be available on the cheapest of carriers nor at the cheapest of fares on the mainstream carriers.
As I often say about consumerism in general: “You don’t always get what you pay for, but you almost never get what you *don’t *pay for.” The least expensive possible product is usually cheapened almost to unusability. Don’t buy that stuff.
It all comes down to a “mistake” made by the airlines decades ago-they deal with seat width. The actual size they should be dealing with is shoulder width-it is the larger number. This has been known for a long time: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/30/travel/airline-seats/
The effect is the same as what has been described by all the posters above-there isn’t enough room for everyone’s shoulders even in the best of situations. To fit, the window person has to lean toward the window, the aisle person sticks out into the aisle, and the middle person has to sit straight and be uncomfortable.
I have zero problem defining it. The centerline of the armrest to the ceiling.
I’ve been this guy before and I was livid. I’d love to push a button and have dividers raise up out of the arm rest.
That’s a distinction that’s not a difference.
If the space from wall to wall is 11 feet and we’re putting 6 people in it side by side, then there’s 11/6 of space per person. With a realistic aisle width of just under 2 feet that’s more like (9+ feet)/6 people.
Whether that’s measured at the floor, the ceiling, your waist or your shoulders doesn’t change the physics. It might change the number, but it isn’t going to change the space. Only altering the numerator or the denominator can change the space. So more space only comes from wider aircraft or fewer seats per row.
I think the middle-seat passenger gets dibs on the armrest. Because it sucks to be in the middle. If I have the aisle or window, I might rest my elbow on the armrest, but I will let the center person position himself first, and try to use the space in front or behind his elbow.
You can sit next to me anytime gigi. I’ll share some of my seat with you.
Where the hell has common courtesy gone?
Sometimes it’s better to have paid wine service than free wine, because with free wine they sometimes seem to want to cut me off.
As for food, I wish more airlines sold it. I hate having a 2.3 hour flight with a one hour connection to another 2.3 hour flight, because no food or snacks are sold on flights less than 2.5 hours, and it doesn’t leave time to buy a meal during the connection!
As long as the connecting gates are at least 1/2 mile apart you can call the whole thing a diet/exercise combo. And at no extra charge! See, we do care about your well-being. 
About ten years ago- it is probably more now- there was a problem with a flight on Virgin.
Again on memory it was going from the USA to the UK. A large person sat in beside the affected person , lifted the arm rest and said “I need space”. Affected person spoke to stewardess who wouldn’t do anything about it even though she was terribly cramped. And there were also vacant seats in First Class.
She took Virgin to Court and won an award of 15,000 pounds. I guess that is nothing for an airline, but if the stewardess had half a functioning brain she would have upgraded the affected passenger and averted the trouble.
Two things though- the oversize person was in my view exceeding what is allowed. Secondly, the airline should have ensured the comfort of those around her.
I have also been stuck beside a very large woman on a domestic flight where she could not lower the table to have coffee. She apologised for taking so much room- she had to have the extra seat belt for pregnant women. I really felt so sorry for her- she never at all tried to intrude on the space of mine.
I get more upset about the recline allowed in the seats.
My husband spent some time flying back and forth to China as an executive - first class in the pods (he said they were a lot nicer than coach, but it still wasn’t like you actually got a decent bed when it was lie flat).
Now he’s insufferable in coach.
Yup, when on business we get to fly in business class in the pods, which are much, much nicer than coach. And, yup, I’m insufferable in coach as a result (which is, of course, on my own dime).
The pods are comfortable enough for most people, I assume, except for those outliers like me. When fully reclined my 6’2" body still needs to be a little bit fetal.