Christopher Elliott has a rather silly piece that argues “Plane seats are too small: Airlines continue to prioritize profit over comfort, safety.”
I wonder if he knows that the U.S. airlines with the least space per passenger also generate the least profit? Spirit Airlines is in bankruptcy! Frontier Airlines is struggling. Airline margins overall are small, underperforming most industries even for the most profitable players.
Elliott complains that the FAA didn’t require more legroom on planes, using evacuation standards as an excuse. However,
- Fewer passengers on a plane means higher fares to break even. Airlines can pursue a premium strategy but then the complaint would be they are making airfares unaffordable.
- Outlawing tighter seat pitch by the way doesn’t improve things on United, Delta and American – it means outlawing the business models of Spirit and Frontier which drive down the price of travel not just on their own flights but also where they compete with United, Delta and American.
Most carriers now do both, offering more comfortable seats in addition to seats with less space, in order to appeal to different customer segments and price points. Frontier and Spirit are adding premium features while United et al have first class, extra legroom coach and even basic economy which is not just tighter seating but more restrictive policies. In other words, customers choose to buy the product they want.
American Airlines Extra Legroom Coach
Where there is a real point of complaint (but Elliott misses this) is when airlines don’t pay attention to the details of their product and it affects cabin comfort. For instance, American Airlines failed to build a mockup of their new domestic cabin before deploying it, and many mistakes were made that inconvenienced customers – from water that shot back at passengers in the lavatory to doors that banged into each other. And they screwed up first class, too the narrative that coach is an afterthought versus first was clearly wrong.
The then-CEO of the airline didn’t even try the product until.it was in the market for over six months. The message inside the company was clear: the details of the product and how customers experience them aren’t prioritized. Details matter a great deal when every inch comes at such a premium!
But that’s punished by the marketplace – as American has struggled financially compared to peers and their share price has lagged (even as it has come up from the bottom).
Delta Air Lines First Class
Personally I find many of United’s coach seats more uncomfortable than American, and Delta’s no better. In fact, Delta packs people so tightly into planes that American’s former CEO could claim (not quite correctly) that they had to attach flight attendant jumpseats to lavatory doors.
It often isn’t just the room but the padding! The products at United, especially, that date to the Jeff Smisek era and his so-called Project Quality to cut billions of dollars out of the operation, are disappointing. But many of those cuts were to first class at the time, too, for instance eliminating ketchup and garlic bread.
Different airlines employ different strategies, and customers have choices. If you want more choices for customers, though, there are better things to do than effectively outlawing the cheapest fares. Make airport slots and gates more competitive (for instance, congestion prices replaces takeoff and landing slots which are a subsidy to incumbent carriers) and welcoming foreign investment in U.S. carriers – let’s bring in Emirates and Ryanair both to compete.
The US should allow cabotage in exchange for cabotage and 9th freedom rights for a block of countries that includes Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Chile, and Thailand. That way, maybe EVA, ANA, and Singapore Airlines might fly US domestic routes.
I agree with the congestion fees. I also suggest that airports stop leasing gates and make gate areas universal to all airlines to eliminate gate hoarding and open the airport up to competition.
Just as every such complainer does, he conflates seat pitch and width. All Boeing-designed narrow bodies have had 3-3 Y seating in the same (exterior) width tube (the interior width is slightly more today). The A320 series is wider. Yes, 777s went from 3-3-3 to 3-4-3 and almost nobody does the 2-4-2 that the 787 was designed for. But, today you’re likely to have a wider seat on average on narrow bodies than in the pre-deregulation days. Please stop complaining about seat pitch until the days when no Y seats are sold until Y+ (and better) is sold out. People have voted for this by the way they spend their dollars and live in a fool’s imaginary world thinking airlines can be forced to add to seat pitch but airfares will not go up.
I wondered, as I read this obtuse paean to sardines, “how on earth could any grown man be so blasse about the incredibly tiny seats on commercial aircraft?” So, after finding a picture of the author, dwarfed by the seemingly prodigious 5’8″ altitude of Ted “Cancun” Cruz, the realization hit.
Yes, a 5’4″ man can indeed ignore size complaints and revel in the morning vast expanse of economy seating.
It is Elliott. Enough said
Pax are getting wider. Can not fit a cow into a shoe box. The planes are still 3-3 or 3-4-3.
It is the depth that is the issue for us taller people
Gary, I normally enjoy your articles but you have completely missed the mark here. You describe airlines offering different fare classes, from basic economy to various premium classes and imply that basic economy seating on legacy carriers is somehow different from “regular” economy seating. That is not the case. If you buy basic economy, you are more likely to get a middle seat and face extra charges for bags, not earn FF miles, etc., but the actual seat is identical to the seats offered in regular economy–and it is too small. On domestic flights, even first class seats often don’t have enough pitch to be comfortable. Airline companies, like us humans in general, seem only to teach each other their bad habits. The race to the bottom continues, with smaller seats, worse service, the decline of FF programs, etc. LCCs are not struggling because their business model was wrong; it’s because legacy carriers have also embraced that model but are segmented to include other options as well, as you pointed out. Continuing consolidation in the industry leads to fewer choices, making this possible. If LCCs go out of business and that leads to higher fares, it will have been this race to the bottom by legacy carriers that was a major cause. There may not be anything we can do about it but let’s not try to justify or excuse it.
Seat pitch and recline angle need to be regulated to a comfortable level, not just some safety minimum. You’re not meant to sit upright in the takeoff/landing position an entire flight. But since pitch is so reduced, reclining is now an intrusion into the seat behind you. I get that fares will go up when less seats are put into the planes, but that’s when capitalism will succeed. If the consumer doesn’t like the price, they will choose an alternative (brand or mode of transportation). Let’s not allow the product to get significantly worse so that prices can remain “low” (really just profits increasing). Price to fly is multiples higher, even though airlines striped away the perviously “included” extras like
No change fees
No cancellation fees
Free seat selection
Free checked bags
Free carryon
Free meals
What am I missing?
Smaller and uncomfortable seats push more well heeled people to buy first and business class
Offer a quality economy product and airline can’t upsell
The upper portion of seats even in first class always hit me square on the shoulders causing my back to not even rest against the seat. At least on some seats I’ve been able to raise the headrest to get it off my shoulders. I’m 6’5” really not so tall and paying the same in first class as others only to be miserable the entire flight. There’s gotta be better adjustments or shapes that can better fit. Car companies figured it out, movie theaters.
Ozempic to the rescue!
Mr. Leff – on this one point I will disagree with you. Once you put mobility challenged customer in a window seat (wearing a full leg cast, needing a cane or crutches, etc.), if there is an emergency getting them out of the seat and off the airplane can be a dangerous situation.
Unfortunately when flying, I see this situation all too often. Deta tries to put the passengers in a location that should make it easier, but when they run out of those seats, they end up with passengers in places that make it hard to get those passengers off the airplane.
…Also…
I have learned to live with the company’s requirements for flying, I am not allowed to buy an upgrade, even if I do it on my own money (miles). So it is not always a choice of what the passenger is willing to pay for.
Part of the problem is that people do not want to pay any more today in actual dollars than they did 50 years ago. In 1970 (well into the jet age) the average ticket cost approximately $500.00 in 1970 dollars JFK to LAX. That’s the equivilent of $3500.00 today. The averate cost today is just over $330.00 in current dollars.. How do we expect the airlines to pay for $80,000,000 airliners if they don’t squeeze in a few more seats by taking away leg room. Of that $330.00 only approx. $7.00 is, on average, profit. Sorry, but you get what you pay for.
You seem to be looking into the dark. Airlines are losing money because administrators take millions (for their annual bonuses) away from the bottom line.
Yes, it’s your butt getting wider.
Delta actually offers, on average, more pitch per economy and “standard” extra legroom economy seat than American and United. It’s still not great but it is more. They use pinnacle b seats for most economy seats. United uses pinnacle on some older ones (they also don’t replace seat cushions at regular intervals) but have switched to the meridian sest, which, I think offers more personal space with less pitch than the pinnacle seat.
Gary is greedy, wants more for less.cWhy would he invite foreign government-subsizided carriers, with a proven history of employee neglect, into the US? Really despicable and desperate behavior from him.
If Emirates is ever allowed to compete domestically with the big three in the U.S, all three big guys will be racing each other to who can go out of business first. Even if you fly economy on them, you will be shocked to learn just how poor our airline service is here in this country (just in case you did not already know),and what not flying cattle car class can really be like. If you have not had the opportunity or pleasure to fly Emirates in any one of their four cabins, definitely do so. They serve several U.S. gateway cities: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York John F Kennedy, Newark, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. You can fly them direct to Milan from JFK. All other routes go through Dubai to over 50 destinations world wide. Unless of course you are wanting to fly to Dubai. Then you have a direct flight to Dubai from all those cities, unless you are flying to Milan out of JFK. And perhaps the best part of all is, you can fly on the amazing A380 out of Houston, Los Angeles, New York JFK, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. But be forewarned, you may never want to fly on any other aircraft ever again. When not flying to or from those cities, you will be flying on one of their 777-300 aircraft. Check out their web site and get a idea of what flying can really be like and more importantly, what it should be like.
For those of you who might be interested in their credit card, take a look at all the perks you will have when getting their premium Master Card. To start, how about Gold status for the first year and then Silver status after that, if you can’t qualify for Gold status the second year. With the premium card, you will never have any lower status than Silver as long as you don’t cancel your card! Applications for the premium master card can be found on Barclay’s web site or fill out an application on Emirates.com.
To be fair US male average height went from 171 to 177cm in the last 100 years. US women went from 159 to 163.5cm. So, we’d expect waist measurements to rise by about 3 cm in men (in circumference not “diameter”). But, in 1970, average BMI (which of course takes height into account) was 25.7, with 25.0 to 29.9 being considered “overweight.” That is now 30.0. So, on average, we are “obese.” BTW, men’s legs would average 3cm longer over 100 years, but the relevant number—how far the knees protrude while seated—would be less than that.
Rough, back of envelope calculations:
DL is offering a $311 Y r/t airfare for IND-ATL. WN offers it just under $300 on their lowest fare. DL is flying the “739” version of their 737-900. I used a Tuesday-Tuesday r/t in May. I multiplied the extra legroom, Y+, seats by their price (21×$386) and the Y seats by their price (139×$311). Now take the sum of the two and divide by 148. There are 160 Y and Y+ on the 739. Remove two rows (i.e., 160-12) and my guess is you’ll get 148 seats with the Y+ pitch of 34”. So, no comfort plus, just coach with CP legroom. The new price is $350 or so (with additional taxes), or 12.5% more. Why won’t DL do this? It sounds like something I’d prefer. Why not? Too many people would turn their nose up at paying $55 more than WN. People drive dense seating by the way they spend their dollars.
***I’m glossing over that DL would have lower checked bag fees, the plane would be 12 seats lighter at minimum and 12 seats + 12 people + their luggage lighter at max capacity, and I’ve assumed current/”new” flights have no empty seats. Less gate checking, less free beverages/snacks, and maybe some more.
Well, just another LONG article that says NOTHING. What happen to
real reporting and news?? Yep, airline seats are not comfortable,
this is not news.
BMI is one of those curious things that considers three dimensional human beings as two dimensional (body mass divided by the square of the height in units of Kg per meter squared). In the USA, a BMI of 27.8 Kg/m^2 was normal weight until 1998 when the number was lowered to 25 Kg/m^2 to conform with WHO guidelines, automatically reassigning many people as overweight.
Using BMI as a cover for all cases is unscientific as it fails for both tall individuals and for short individuals.
Absolutely solid counterpoints to yet another uneducated and misinformed “expert article”. But as every reader here knows, any person who flies more than 6 segments per year self-qualifies as an expert.. And that includes you Uncle “X” at Christmas. I’d rather referee J.D. vs Thornberg than listen to you bemoan an entire industry when you flew 1,600 miles to Vegas, for $199, departed 10 minutes late for maintenance and did not receive compensation. The nerve of these airlines…
Again, all good points by Jeff, but what would the New Year be w/out , somehow, bringing the ever-present AA bashing.into play. I’m ex-airline (AA competitor) and now UA1k for 10 years so I have no dog in the hunt. But; seriously Jeff, time for a new whipping boy…it’s beyond tiring. Did Crandall ruin your cereal as a kid?
Replacing all of the Y seats with Y+ ones for more money would work at the higher price point if the seats were all marketed as Y+ just not Y+ in a forward location. If I could get that much extra knee room for the modest differential in cost, I would pay the extra money. In fact I already do this on AirAsia flights where the exits over the wings rows have extra knee room for a modest extra cost. The fact that almost no other people pay the extra amount is a bonus due to having empty seats in the rows.
I flew AA on a 787 recently and was very surprised how comfortable it was compared to ual. Padding is everything to me not pitch.
People complaining about domestic American service need to try European domestic business class.
Christopher Elliott is correct.
A contribution to the View from
The Jerry Springer Show Wing:
https://us.yahoo.com/news/united-passenger-banned-airline-peeing-183709425.html
SFO-MNL passenger urinated on a sleeping passenger in the business cabin.
To those of you seeking hard-hitting journalism from this blog: LOL.
As for the topic at… hand: ‘I love a good squeeze’ *wink*
And the answer is always, yes, profits over people, duh.
This is America. We’re corporations, not charities.
I spent my career in commercial aviation, A fact that all of us have known for decades is that, passengers want the lowest fare and they will walk to the competition for a fare that is $10 lower. That’s why airlines like Spirit and Frontier were big threats.
You can see it now in the “economy plus” seating. I fly space available and, if I actually get a seat on the flight, it will be in eco-plus because most of the passengers would not pay the upcharge for the extra legroom.
The basic economy seats are all filled, and people want to poach up into economy plus seats when the door of the airplane closes. They weren’t willing to pay for it, but they howl when flight attendants tell them to return to the seats they paid for.
It’s just human nature to want something for nothing.
Flying nowadays is comodoty. Price drives most decisions. Im tied to AA as the status is what helps me when things get complicated. He status gives me that extra attention and help. If it wasn’t for that I would just find the cheapest fair. So at least for me, the FF program is what keeps me at AA. I’ve flown Emitates and it’s a great experience but the AA international product is good, not great. So you get what you pay for. I
It’s a safety issue, IMHO. I’m waiting for a consumer group to conduct and film the evacuation test with a statistically-accurate cross section of the flying public. Regulators will never do that.
That said, it’s a cruel world if you’re left-handed and tall.
Plenty of legitimate arguments here, but highlighting “eliminating ketchup and garlic bread” is so irrelevant compared to seat size and comfort that it insults our intelligence.
Gary is mad because he himself is a BMI over 30 guy.
My bmi is 26.
The Boeing 737 has been the same diameter for more than 57 years, so seats haven’t changed in width. The 737-100 was 102 ft to the current max9 at 138 ft. The all coach config started at about 100 seats on the-100 and now about 200 on the max9.
For heavens sake, just re-regulate the airlines already, force them to install bigger seats, jack the prices (inflation adjusted) back up to what they used to be, and put the whiny bargain bin flyers who want something for nothing back onto the busses and trains where they belong.
Awhile back, Elliott also wrote an article saying that all of the bad behavior on flights were the fault of airlines because it was so uncomfortable to fly. Because you were uncomfortable, you had no choice but to get drunk and then attack your fellow passengers because the airlines encourage this.
He also wrote an article saying that the Board of Directors intentionally look for ways to make flying uncomfortable.
So at least there’s that.
If you want comfort you can pay for comfort. I fail to see the issue.
The aircraft fuselage is only so wide. Leaving 18” wide aisle with 3/3 seating doesn’t allow any more seat width. As for seat pitch, to me it’s a safety concern. Add to the evacuation mix passengers of size, mobility challenged, emotional support and service animals, evacuation in 90 seconds using half of the available emergency exits is impossible. If passengers want a safe and comfortable travel experience, those come at a cost.
This is a nonsense article. Safety is seriously impaired by seat size. But the fix is in. ONLY airlines themselves are allowed to verify evacuation times. And they wrote the rules so that they can use young, fit employees who have practiced many times. They take no carryon or underseat luggage. There are no obese or physically impaired people. There is no smoke or fire or other urgency present. And they can take as many tries as they wish to come up with one evacuation that meets the standard.
These days NO airline could evacuate any modern aircraft in the allotted time using normal people acting normally. And seat size and crowding is a major reason. Who cares about cost when you are dead because you could not safely evacuate a compromised aircraft.
Definite gold star for the commenter who explains that he is “6’5” really not so tall.” To describe a 99th percentile statistical ranking as “not so” anything is a bold move!! The core argument in the Elliott article is, of course, wishful as opposed to logical. If the majority of the flying public in fact believed strongly enough that airplane seats are too tight, the extra legroom section of every flight would be the first to sell out. Almost the exact opposite is often the case.
Considering that basically every flight these days is packed, and the fact that between major cities airlines are operating flights every hour or sometimes every half hour, I think the real issue is that they refuse to fly larger aircraft domestically. It used to be that if you flew from one end of the country to the other you were on wide body, now you’re on a 737. The end result of this is that it costs more per passenger mile than it would on a larger aircraft, people aren’t willing to pay more, so people have to be crammed in tighter. On those larger aircraft flying overseas, the seat pitch is often much better while still maintaining a lower cost per passenger mile.
Bring back domestic wide body! Even if it means that departures are only once every hour and a half instead of once every 30 minutes.
People want 34″ pitch, but they buy seats with 30″. They have spoken with their wallet. But, since 30″ can be uncomfortable, they complain. This translates into a simple mantra: ” I want extra legroom for no increased price. ” Can’t/won’t happen. STFU. if you want seating for 6, don’t buy a Civic. Don’t try to force Honda to make all cars seat at least 6.
I recently flew several flights on AA in First and I really dislike their current seat on the aisle side. The metal strip which is below the seat and goes around the front and under the seat makes it really uncomfortable for a person of size as my leg presses against it. Luckily I was with my wife and she was willing to swap with me.
I wonder if an airline could win by converting a 737 to 2-3 seating and changing all seats to 20″ width from 17″…would they be able to raise the cost of a wider seat to cover the cost of losing 1 seat per row? Theoretically that would be 20% above the seat average fare per row. Plus there would be more bin space, a wider aisle, more room for freight, and a little less stress for the passengers…
I find it laughable when people say “if we regulate prices will go up”. The fact is that early on, the airlines had bigger seats and wider aisles. I still remember on international flights, you would get a welcome pouch with a toothbrush and a eye mask and other trinkets. They made a profit. Now, everyone in economy is packed like sardines and airlines are making record profits. The legacy carriers are not struggling financially. If they fail to make a few extra million a year, it wouldn’t lead them to fail. And if they did fail, it would allow for new blood to enter the market.
Dave W.
Agreed. American airlines tried doing just that, removing two rows of seats and increasing pitch, and the consumer refused to pay the premium. People do in fact vote with their wallet and they do drive the denser seating.
The seat are just too small, period. No amount of airline sponsored articles trying to divert attention away is going to change that.
The argument that you can get the extra space in higher grade seats is absolute proof of profits over customer safety and comfort.
At this point it would be cheaper and a better investment for airlines to build high speed trains between major cities while providing more comfortable flights between ones not connected by rail. Remove cross county flights with high speed rail to save money.