Cite for what? That a large number of people are dissatisfied with airline travel?
Yes, that the market has failed to achieve satisfaction for most customers.
Regardless, your premise is that the government is charged with ensuring customer satisfaction?
What next, government regulations requiring warm chocolate cookies on pillows in every hotel room?
There have been, I think, three recent seat recline incidents that led to flights being diverted. But there are thousands of flights that end without incident, so I doubt that “a large number of people” are dissatisfied. (At least not due to seat pitch. Personally, the nonsense at the security checkpoint is more of an annoyance.)
:dubious: That’s quite the strawman you built.
When you are above average height, the typical airline seat can be very, very uncomfortable. In my experience, and from my search for flights outlined in my previous post upgrading is not as easy as people claim it to be.
And, since those seats go so fast, they must be very desirable. Even if they cost a little more. So, it follows that many people are not able to get (and pay for) the upgraded seat. I would say those people are dissatisfied.
If people want to say “To bad for you, I’m comfortable in economy, it’s not my problem” Fine. But I wish they would stop saying “Just upgrade”. In my experience, and my recent searches, upgrading (during purchase or check in) to a stretch seat, or an exit seat is a long shot.
Airline pilot …
Point 1: As the OP said, “seat pitch” is the distance from the back of one seat to the back of the next. That matters to the airline as they’re mapping out how many seats fit in a jet. But the thing you care about is the “seat space”, from the front of your seat back to the back of the seat back ahead of you. That’s the space you have available for your use.
In the last 10 years the seat industry has made great strides in building the seats thinner. And as they’ve done so, the airlines have shortened the pitch while (mostly) not decreasing the seat space.
So regulating seat pitch is the wrong target. Regulate the available seat space if you’re going to regulate anything at all.
Point 2: the most modern seats have a new feature: as they recline, the seat pan translates forward as the back pivots rearward. The effect is the top of the seat back doesn’t stick so far to the back, leaving more room for the people behind to get in and out of their seats for any given degree of recline. That’s clever mechanical engineering.
But far more cleverly, it changes the terms of the social deal for each passenger. With traditional recline designs, reclining your seat is 100% gain for you and 100% loss for the person behind. Which of course triggers the worst behavior from the most selfish people. Another example of “jerks win”.
With the new design, the decision to recline your seat is also a decision to reduce your own knee room. While also providing a bit more knee room for the person behind. So now you’re not just taking without giving. And the person you’re taking from is also the person you’re giving to. You can choose to play or not, and you can choose how much to play. Some folks need all their knee space and so can’t recline; thereby not harming the person behind. Others can afford to give up the knee space and so recline and take some face space & tray space from the person behind while compensating them with some extra knee room.
That’s a much better example of the kind of give & take which makes any complex society work smoothly.
Point 3: Nobody is talking in this thread about seat width. I think we can all agree that compared to say, 1965, passengers (at least American ones) are both taller and wider now than they were. But they’re a lot more wider than they are more taller.
Would it make more sense to regulate seat width? Speaking just for me, I’m of typical height but skinny. As a passenger I don’t mind the seat pitch (or space) on current major US airlines. I do mind the width wherein two other standard-size Americans in my row spill over into my seat and if I draw two overweight Americans (the usual case) then they really intrude on my space.
From the airlines’ point of view, what we have to sell is square inches of floor space times hours of occupation. That’s really it. Or at least that’s where our cost per passenger ultimately derive from.
There is a small airline using small planes in Samoa which is famous for charging passengers by the pound. You & your baggage get on the scale & are weighed & priced like a side of beef. $125 per pound times 2 hours flight time = $250 for your ticket.
Does anyone favor this approach? With of course various seat sizes installed to match.
I agree you’re describing the situation accurately, at least some of the time on some flights between some city pairs.
And to the degree it’s happening, it represents a market failure. You’d like to pay extra to buy something we’d like to sell you at an incremental profit. It just happens to not be logistically feasible to put another row of expanded-space seats on your particular flight.
Given that airline profit margins average negative across the industry across all time, and given that seats on flights are perishable assets, we loose a bundle of money each time an airplane flies less than 100% full. Price competition is that perfect in our business.
And until we can get airplanes that can have seat pitch changed from flight to flight during the day, we’re not able to increase seat pitch for a few more customers on *this *flight without leaving a few seats off the jet for all it’s other flights for the next 6 months. And all those other days that plane leaves 6 people behind because we can’t put the extra seats back in more than offset the extra $50 we could have charged you and 5 other folks for expanded space on that one day.
Different airlines are experimenting with super-premium layouts in some super premium markets. That is an example of fitting the seat pitch to the customer desire and charging accordingly. But it requires a stable enough market that’s big enough to dedicate a small fleet of custom-configured aircraft to. Some markets are that big and that stable. But the generic flight from ABC to the hub to DEF is (I bet) never going to get that treatment.
What we are talking about here is who pays for extra room.
Either the people who want the extra room pay for the room that they use, or they lobby for regulations that spread those costs to people who neither need nor want the extra room (which are the vast majority of people.)
This is like requiring all buffets to offer lobster, which will raise the price for everyone, because I like lobster and would like it always available to me.
I have seen no proof that this is a health or safety issue. Being uncomfortable is not the same as a health risk, and we sell uncomfortable products all the time. I would think it is pretty unprecedented to ban an enormously popular product and replace it with a much less popular product based on the personal comfort of a small minority alone.
On a practical note, air travel benefits business, tourism, intellectual exchange, education and the social fabric of our nation. Anything that decreases accessibility of air travel will have a negative impact on the country.
I don’t think people are saying “you personally should upgrade” as much as “There is an existing market solution to this, and of airlines are not implementing the solution chances are that the demand is lot there to the degree being represented.”
Ugh. Bad iPhone. And if airlines are not implementing the solution chances are the demand is not there…
I won’t pretend to know how airlines figure out the prices for their seats, but if the demand is not there, why is it easy to get an economy seat, but not easy to get (and pay extra for) a stretch seat because the stretch seats are already booked?
It IS getting better. Airlines crunched people down to the point that passengers are now rebelling. Literally in some cases, causing airlines to divert.
I’m sure the airlines are taking notice, and bet dollars to donuts that we see more stretch seating in the future.
Nice strawman.
The government currently sets a minimum wage. Is that like insisting that every working American be paid enough to afford lobster every night?
Because that’s what you’re saying.
Nice straw man! Is that like saying the government should ensure the comfort of every airline passenger to the highest level of satisfaction? Because that’s what you’re saying.
What about the carbon emissions?
Now that’s an interesting idea. Government limiting the amount of space between rows, so that there are no comfortable seats, as a means of reducing the demand for air travel, thus reducing the number of commercial aircraft…thus reducing carbon emissions! Ta-da!
But the amount of carbon emissions on an airline flight is basically fixed, whether it flies empty or with all-economy seating. So by cramming more passengers on a flight, the airline is reducing the per-person carbon emissions.
Well, I was at least saying something intelligible. Damned if I can figure out what you’re saying.
"Its top of the 5th and Johnny LA steps up to the plate. Its a Fling and a Miss!!!
The closet will be full as the pitcher calls time.
You know, Johnny LA is batting well over .250 against left handed pitchers and an amazing .296 against righties; its almost like he can handle anyone the Giants can put on the mound…"
All you are saying is “I would like this thing that has no larger benefit to society than my own personal comfort, and upon reflection I would rather set up some scheme to make other people pay for it.”
I suppose in a sense there’s an indirect regulation of how many people you may cram in, with the requirement that it be feasible to evacuate an airliner in 90 seconds from pulling the red handle to everyone outside the hull? This should limit how many total people you can put inside, and that eventually affects how close you can pack them. Just so happens that I’d expect if you are prudent you make it so you can move a LOT of people in 90 seconds, preferrably slightly more than the maximum possible load.
They are. For a price, of course, and as you can imagine people will complain about that.
the pitch is not the problem. It’s the ever decreasing distance between seats.
What would help is a process that allows people to see what they’re buying. If Airline A sells a seat from JFK to LAX for $400 and Airline B sells the same route for $500 which one is everybody going to buy? The $400 seat because assumptions are made that a seat is a seat.
Now if they knew the $500 seat had 8 more inches of space then a cost/benefit decision can be made.