Again I am NOT an aeronautic engineer but let’s do some math (which will be full of assumptions but I do what I can).
I’ll use a 737-500 for this (there are a lot of variants). It has an interior cabin width of 139" and weighs in at 70,510 pounds. So call it 507 pounds per inch. Adding 12 inches would make it weigh 76,600 pounds. So you are adding roughly 6,000 pounds of weight or an 8.5% increase in weight.
Now I know that analysis is not totally fair since there is weight in other parts of the plane not affected by widening the body. But then adding that weight may necessitate a lengthening of the wings, adding more fuel to get the same range, extra paint (believe it or not paint on a plane adds up too) and so on. The real answer is beyond me to calculate but gets us an idea.
My recollection on passenger jets is they run up to the ragged edge of what safety regulations allow as far as takeoff weight versus engine thrust and whatnot go. There is of course a healthy safety margin built in but wasn’t a reason for reassessing what an “average” person weighs prompted by a crash where the lower assumption was wrong enough that it became a significant factor?
I would think adding 8.5% overall weight and not even counting what that does to assess new flight characteristics would be a VERY significant cost to run the plane. But even if we ignore development costs that need to be accounted for and just go with operating costs in the end we are left with people grabbing the cheapest seats possible.
Say they add 10% to the ticket price. I’d probably pay $330 instead of $300 for a more comfy seat but I guarantee you my company would not (they go for lowest price period and it is all done through their travel department so I have zero choice). That and most people hitting the internet for a ticket will opt for the $300 ticket. Heck, they rarely guarantee what kind of plane you will be on anyway.
IIRC Business Class is only on overseas flights. Perhaps they offer it now for longer hauls like New York to LA (I don’t know) but I have never seen a Business Class on domestic flights in the US. I have no idea why not.
The cost increase for first class is out of ALL proportion to what you get but they charge what people are willing to pay and I never see first class empty. To be fair though I think few ever pay full fare on a first class ticket. Most are upgrades I believe.
If I were rich, and doing so wouldn’t penalize me in other ways, I’d always fly first class. Always. It’s not only more comfortable than coach, it’s comfortable period. Getting on and off first is pretty cool too. Tall guys aught to appreciate that, not having to stand all leaned over waiting their turn.
And they mostly make the riff-raff in back leave you alone.
I suspect that most of you, if you could go first class without sacrifice, would.
I certainly would but I’d have to be truly wealthy to be ok with buying those tickets.
That and I find First Class on most jets to be rather crappy (mostly a moderately bigger seat and something that almost passes for food). Where First Class REALLY shines is on widebody jets. I have had occasion to fly first class in both cases and I will say on a widebody jet it is a real treat. Often one of the highlights of the whole trip.
Most people can afford $300 for a flight to a job interview or funeral, I could probably scrounge it if I absolutely had to but it would probably mean shorting a few bills for that month. Very few people can randomly decide to spend $1000 when they can just barely afford $300. And dont give me crap about if they cant afford it they shouldnt go. My parents are both 84. Every chance I get to see them I take because it may be my last. I get to see them once a year. Every year the odds increase that there will not be a next year.
You make choices in your life. If seeing your parents is important live more closely to them. If other reasons (job, SO, climate, whatever) have you living far away that is YOUR choice. We would all like to see friends and family more but no one suggests it should be free to do so.
As it stands travel is about as cheap as it has ever been in history. That you can zip thousands of miles for a few hundred dollars is remarkable. Part of the price of that is getting squished into a tube and being uncomfortable for a few hours.
If your comfort is important enough to you the option exists for a more expensive ticket to accommodate that. Yeah most people cannot abide that cost for the benefit but it is there and your choice. To make it otherwise would just raise all ticket prices and if you are scraping to get the cheapo tickets of today it would be even worse for you if they added 2" to every seat.
Not only have I never seen Business Class on a US domestic flight, I’ve seen multiple cases where “Business” and “First” on overseas flights were exactly the same, except a) you paid $3000 more for your ticket, and b) you got a slightly different lounge when you landed than the Business folks. :rolleyes: No thanks, I’ll stick with Business…
I could fly First every single trip I go on (couple score a year), and the outlay would not impact my standard of living one bit. However, I can’t in good conscience do it because the differential service is almost always not, IMO, worth the price. It costs disproportionately much to go to First, and one of the reasons that First sells at that disproportionate price is because Coach is so fucking miserable to fly in.
IMO, the misery of Coach is, in part, driving the high cost of Business and First. But sometimes, it’s worth it anyhow. For example, on my 20+hour flight(s) to Taipei, I flew First/Business all the way. You better believe that I wasn’t going to sit in those tiny coach seats, and I’m not that large (5’5", 128 pounds).
I won’t give you any crap at all. I don’t spring for the seat upgrades either. I just understand that by choosing what flight to buy based mainly on price gets me cramped seats.
I guess you must happen to have a job specialty that will let you live anywhere in the country for just putting in a resume, or you are rich and can eat the cost of paying off a mortgage, buying a new place to live and just moving at the drop of a hat.
When the Navy tells you to go and live somewhere, you can choose where they tell you to go , or festive Ft Levenworth. MrAru preferred to go to his duty station. I happened to want to live with mrAru, being married is not just getting his paycheck in the bank - I want to spend time with him in and out of bed.
Although I suppose I could just ask my parents to up and move from their home of 30+ years because we are stuck here…
There are plenty of people who fly first class just about every time they fly, not because they pay the outrageous fares, but because they fly so much that their elite frequent flier status ensures that they get upgraded on almost every flight.
You can argue your circumstances all you like but in the end they are choices you made. They may be very reasonable and understandable choices but still yours. I have known people who have had long term (12+ years) relationships break up over an, “I need to be there” stance where the other was not willing to do so. Sucks but it happens.
And like I said travel is about as cheap as it has ever been (bit more lately due to fuel prices). So you CAN see your parents once a year. Go back to before airline deregulation and it would have cost you more. Go back to before airlines and more expensive still. Go back to before cars and you’d be lucky to ever get more than 20 miles from home.
It would be different if the price upgrade were reasonable. I’d pay 50% more in price if it got me 50% more in seat. In fact that is one of the reasons that I fly Airtran all the time. They give you the option for upgrading to first class for between $40 to $60 per leg of the trip. It’s well worth it to me. On my last trip a few weeks ago, US Airways offered me a $50 upgrade to business on check in. Which I took in a heart beat. So if all upgrades or better seating were in that price range, then perhaps more people would think about it.
But to also semi-addres your OP, as shown here, the Boeing 737-600 has 17 rows in coach. Say they eliminated on seat from each row to make more room. I’m going to do a low guess here and say that an average airfare is around $250 (that’s a low guess obviously). But that right there is $4250 that the airline will lose each and every flight. If they’re already operating at margin in a lot of cases, they can’t afford to do that. And sure you can say that they could raise the price for the other seats, but then nobody would fly them because people want the absolute lowest price available.
I would be willing to pay that, too. I really, really wish there was an option between “comfy, but three or four times as expensive” and “cheap but painful”. If a particular airline (with flights where I need to go, of course) were to advertise seats that are even 20% wider or with 20% more legroom, I would develop some serious brand loyalty instantly.
I understand from some of the math above that widening the plane / having rows of five instead of six would probably be commercially unsupportable. But couldn’t an airline, for instance, take out a row or two rows of seats and adjust a section of “Coach Plus” seats to have more legroom?
They have tried that. British Air, American, and others have tried this. And in many (most? all???) cases, they’ve got rid of them, or restricted them to only certain routes, because somehow they still lose money on them.
I thought British Air had some success with this (been ages since I followed it though).
I think the main reason for this is business travel which makes up a majority of air travel in the US. Businesses are not overly concerned with your comfort. They will stuff you on the cheapest flight possible most times (barring some executive types).
Maintaining loyalty with vacation travelers is all well and good but most people only do that 1-3 times a year and reconfiguring a fleet of planes for that probably will not pay off.
Easy airline economics 101: If we removed 1 seat from each row of a 737, that would free up about 24" of lateral space. If we divide the 24" among the 5 remaining seats, we can make each seat about 5" wider without xchanging the airplane at all.
Would you pay 20% more for the extra 5"? Because for it to be revenue neutral to the airline, the 5 people in that row must pay as much as 6 did before.
Most people will NOT pay a 20% premium for 20% more space.
So the airline that chooses to go with 5 seats will be unable to charge enough extra to offset the lost revenue. In a business with razor-thin profit margins, they’re doomed.
The exact same logic applies to legroom. The good news is that the increments can be smaller, but the econimocs work out the same. The seats are on tracks and can be adjusted in 1" increments. Ditto the overhead reading light, etc. units. So an airline could choose to change from 34" pitch to 35" pitch and give each passenger 3% more total room, which is really about a 6% jump in knee/leg room.
But they’d also have to take out a row of seats, and all the other seats would have to pay for the lost revenue for the 6 seats no longer aboard.
Various airlines have tried more spacious coach cabins. In every case the public likes it, but won’t pay a commensurate premium for it. In a commodity business, that’s the kiss of death.
One thing that you can do is to become aware of the specific airplanes you are flying and the relative pitches of the individual seats. While I will not pay for first class, I will pay for a seat on a plane that I know will be reasonably comfortable for me. That’s why I will never fly Southwest, or any airline that doesn’t allow me to choose my seat in advance. Before I fly, I will go to SeatGuru.com and locate the best possible seats. On my last trip, I changed the seat on three out of my four legs to ones that would offer me more room. If the cheapest flight has no window seats (my personal preference is to always sit in a window seat), I move on to the next flight. I generally pay about $150 to $200 more for each trip than the lowest possible fare (I also make some adjustments for the time of day I fly, since I take public transportation to and from the airport and need to work within their schedule). It’s worth it to me to fly more comfortably, and it’s not too big a financial hit since I fly relatively infrequently. But that’s the choice I make. Presumably if everyone made the same choice, eventually the airlines would have to reconfigure their planes. But since price is still by far the number one consideration for most people when choosing flights, I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.
