We need to stop referring to that statement by gazpacho which you quote. Mangeorge never said or inferred anything to prompt such a statement. I think maybe was referring to something imagined. Mangeorge asked why airlines don’t make planes wider. In fact, mangeorge hasn’t really even complained too bitterly about the crowded seats in coach.
Again, removing seats is you guys’ idea. Making the jet wider would be a one-time thing, and if pro-rated over all the many millions of passenger miles the plane would eventually fly probably wouldn’t amount to a lot. All that’s left to be an ongoing cost is increased fuel cost. How much, I ask, could that be.
I don’t know why you insist on speaking about the motivations for mangeorge 's OP. mangeorge simply wondered about why jets aren’t built wider to make more room. The question posed by mangeorge was mainly about engineering and manufacturing and it branched off into areas that were not in the scope of the mangeorge OP. I can see why mangeorge might not be happy with that. I bet if Bob Dole had been elected president then Bob Dole would have introduced some some regulations to address this Bob Dole style.
There are jets of various widths. A feature you will find in the wider bodied jets is that they put more seats side by side than the more narrow bodied jets.
Are there jets 12" wider? Not enough for another row, but enough for another 2" per seat?
I’m not being at all clear, am I?
Sure, and I’d expect this kind of compromise in light aircraft, where the operator is typically the owner (or leasee) and the scope of liability is limited. Ditto for military combat aircraft which are designed to operate in extremes and take off with the largest payload possible. With commercial aircraft, however, I’m surprised that the margins on loading are such that a non-fantastical loading can result in a gear failure on the ground; the liability if such a thing were to happen with passengers on board would seem outrageous and unacceptable to a commerical carrier. But I guess that’s an accepted risk in that industry, to be mitigated by procedures and training. Weird.
Stranger
What?
A small sample of Boeing air craft
737 width 11 ft 6 in
747 width 20 ft
757 width 11 ft 7 in
767 width 15 ft 6 in
What is the exact interior width you want?
Lots.
Those were 2005 prices, which have increased considerably since then.
Well…yes and no.
Per my admittedly (very) dodgy estimate widening a 737 to allow another 2" per seat would increase that plane’s weight by 6,000 pounds.
If we go with your article let’s call that $400 more fuel per flight at today’s prices. The plane I cited I think carries 108 paying passengers. Spread across all passengers their ticket price would increase by $3.70. I think most people would be happy to suck that up.
Of course this ignores many other factors such as cost of redesigning the plane so dramatically, higher purchase cost and so on that would need to be accounted for. But for strictly operating cost that is not so bad.
The seats of every 737 built since the late 80’s is a bit wider than the older models. Up till then, each 737 was required to have a 24 inch wide aisle and the outboard seat encroachment (the distance between the seat structure and fuselage frame structure was 5 inches. Part of the design process of the 737-500 was a narrower aisle of 22 inches and 4 inches of seat encroachment. This extra 4 inches of width was added to the seats. The only reason I remember this is I had a custom made ladder that was 23 inches wide that allowed me to do my work on the 737. My ladder would not work on the narrow aisle airplanes.
As far as tipping airplanes back on their tails, I have seen it twice in the 737 assembly plant. The first time a mechanic was changing a schrader valve on a landing gear strut and attempted to jack just the left side of the airplane. Just about the time the left landing gear tires came off the floor, the airplane rolled back towards the tail. The only thing that kept if from going all the way was the front service door caught the forward entry stand. The second time was caused by the failure of a tail jack due to improper jacking. The jack failed and the airplane rolled back on the wing jacks pushing the tail jack till it caught the left hand stabilizer. The jack tore through the lower stab skin again keeping the airplande from roll over onto it’s tail.
Let’s see;
130 dollars split among 300 passengers? $0.43 each per 2500 lbs. I don’t know how much the extra 2 inches/passenger would weigh.
I also don’t know how far a transcontinental is, but I think I’d pay that.
737 new width = 12 ft. 6 in.
747 " " = 21 ft.
757 " " = 12 ft. 7 in.
767 " " = 16 ft. 6 in.
Of course these don’t all have six seats across, but you can get the idea.
I have a theory about why the airplane industry does not consult you about the width of planes. It is because they know there is no pleasing you and it is best that they just get on with selling planes.
But let’s say you search for flights on Travelocity and came up with two choices, priced $198 and $201.70. Do you look up the seat width of each plane to see if the $201.70 flight offers more room, or just choose the $198 flight?
I am sorry, but you are ALL missing the point.
If they made the seats a lot wider, then everyone would be enjoying the same comfort that frequent flyers (like I used to be) get when they get upgraded for free into the elite seats.
Were I still flying like I did for 11 years, I simply could not handle not being, well…you know, special! Definitely would transfer my alliance to an airline that appreciated me.
BTW: 
and 
Another consideration is construction. Boeing builds fuselages for the 737 in the midwest (Kansas?) and ships them by rail for final assembly in Seattle. Any wider and they would have to rethink the whole process.
Back to the OP’s point about just a little extra wdith: The 1950’s era 707 set a width standard that Boeing has followed exactly through the 727 and 737 & 757. As racer72 pointed out, there have been changes in interior arrangement over the years to try to squeeze a few extra inches into the seats.
The Airbus A318/19/20/21 series which over its lifecycle has competed with the 727, 737, & 757 series (only the 737 remains in production) is in fact slightly wider outside & inside. Per Airbus A320 family - Wikipedia the fuelsage width is 13’, which is ~18" wider than the Boeing standard. Not enough for a whole extra seat (or else one would be there), but still some extra width.
Boeing’s seat width has been constrained by design decisions made in the 1950s (737) and 1970s (767). Airbus’ current competitive products came along in the the '80s & 90s respectively and are slightly wider.
Another effect is that for narrowbody aircraft which only seat 6, the minimum increment/decrement in seat count vs seat width is a large percentage. As the airplane gets wider, you can adjust in smaller increments. Imagine an airplane that could hold either 20 or 21 seats abreast. That marketing decision would involve seat width vs. body count increments of 5%, not 20%. That sounds good from a customer point of view, but what it really means is that by shaving just an inch off the seat width they could stick another seat in the row.
So with that physics in mind, let’s see what’s happening in the industry today:
Later this year Boeing will fly the first 787, the replacement for the 767 medium wide-body. Meanwhile, Airbus is designing their response, the A350XWB where XWB stands for “extra wide body”.
With the 787 & A350, the manufacturers had the opportunity to choose seat width based on 1990s-sized Americans. And then to choose fuselage widh accordingly. So what did they do?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787: (footnotes removed & paragraph breaks inserted)
Read the final paragraph carefully: The new-and-improved wider cabin can accomodate 9 narrow seats or 8 wider ones. The airlines believe people will not pay the extra 12.5% to have the wider seats. So they intend to install the narrow ones.
So back to the OP & the bottom line: Once we get to medium wide-bodies (or bigger), there is almost no way to make the airplane “a little bit” wider & have that reflect into seat width. Any extra fuselage width can be parlayed into an extra seat in the row by artful shaving of the other seats & aisles.
For narrow bodies it is possible to make a fuselage just wider enough that an extra adult-sized seat won’t fit & the extra width almost has to end up in wider seats or aisles. Airbus chose that direction with its A320 series.
Now for some new horror in the future: We know the seats on today’s RJs are even narrower than those on today’s 737s.
Boeing & Airbus are both in the early concept stages of their replacements for the 737 & A320 series. There is no expectation that Boeing will stick with the structural design or tooling from the 707. IOW, they’re really starting with a clean sheet of paper. Whch means fuselage diameter is 100% an open decision.
Will they plan on an airplane slightly wider than a 737 and stuff seven RJ-sized seats into it? I certainly don’t know, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
Where is this cheap air fare that everyone is talking about? We are flying Denver to Pittsburgh for $450 apiece. Coach of course. And then the bastards turned our non-stop flight on the way back to a stop and change of planes in Philly.
Turned a 3 hour trip into a 7 hour one.
It’s in Wichita by a company called Spirit Aviation, Boeing sold off this part of the assembly process about 5 years ago. The planes are not built in Seattle, it’s Renton. Boeing actually hasn’t built an airplane in Seattle since the early 60’s when 707 production was moved to Renton. The 727, 737 and 757 are or were built in Renton, the 747, 767, 777 and 787 are built in Everett, which is about 30 miles north of Seattle.
Well aware of where the planes are assembled. It’s just easier, when talking to a world-wide audience, to say ‘Seattle’. For example, I tell folks that I live ‘near Seattle’, when it’s over an hour away (by either boat or car).