Airlines are finally fixing the middle seat
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
Their whole "the passengers will share a single armrest!" idea completely ignores how people work with regards to personal space (plus they installed their annoying "dual height" armrest in rows that don't share armrests, effectively cutting the armrest's length in half for no value at all).
> "The seat you paid for has borders. Middle-seat elbow ownership ends on the armrests (you’re entitled to both)"
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/article-a-parent...
The airline's already got "being crappy to the person who's having a crappy day" covered. Don't be the human embodiment of an airline.
Is how I read the previous comment.
You'd love it, if it were not for the fact that they went bankrupt in the 90s when the first low-cost carrier entered the Brazilian market.
Until they aren't, and either they need to find way to cut costs or extract more value per-passenger.
> You don’t need to accept ridiculous things for that.
Then don't? What's stopping you from not flying with low-cost carriers?
I already avoid easyjet/ryanair, even if the tickets from some company like KLM/Aegean costs more than double.
Sounds like you've never flown on an Asian airline. I flew on Singapore Airlines a few months ago and economy there was like first-class on an American airline, but with smaller seats.
With flat beds and everything? How can they possibly afford that?
Anyway, I'm talking about the level of service and comfort: great meals, blankets, pillows, beautiful and friendly flight attendants, hot handtowels, free wine/beer, even some warm socks for wearing to the bathroom, are all standard in economy class. Several of these are probably not even available in First Class on American carriers, such as the handtowel or socks or free alcohol.
I think you must have an atypical experience of US business or first.
Towels, socks, free alcohol are all basics on US carriers that you always get in business or first.
Free alcohol is available even in economy on every US carrier I’ve been on.
Citation needed.
>>such as the handtowel or socks or free alcohol. >Towels, socks, free alcohol are all basics on US carriers that you always get in business or first.
No, I'm not talking about towels, I'm talking about a handtowel. It doesn't exist on US planes, because it's an Asian custom. It's a hot, wet towel that they hand out to everyone before every meal so you can wipe your hands. It's called an oshibori in Japanese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshibori https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/22372/in-asian-re...
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/inflight/eco...
"Complimentary house beer and wines, soft drinks, juices, tea and freshly brewed illy coffee"
That's in economy.
> It doesn't exist on US planes, because it's an Asian custom. It's a hot, wet towel that they hand out to everyone before every meal so you can wipe your hands.
Yes, hot wet towels. You get them before meals on US carriers as well. Here's a video of them being handed out in economy on a domestic US flight.
https://youtu.be/KzUyCxFLQP8?t=85
Believe me now?
Honestly, I have no idea where you’re getting this from. There’s certainly economy classes out there worse than SG, but to compare it to any first class experience is complete nonsense.
By a conservative estimate, profit per seat per year would be large hundreds to small thousands of euros.
Is your business' goal something different?
People can fly on different airlines. I used to treat myself to cityjet now and then for a nicer experience when flying DUB->LCY. But usually I took Ryanair, because I valued saving ~100 EUR more than a somewhat more pleasant flight and less time in transit.
But, right now, starting a business with goals that aren't profitability leaves you vulnerable to somebody else who _will_ maximize profitability.
In your own life, even, trying to do things that don't maximize profit (taking more holiday, etc.) leaves you vulnerable to competition from other workers who will do that.
We need to design systems where maximizing profit (something humans have been trying to do forever) produces behaviours we desire, like treating the planet and other people better. But blaming a single business working within the constraints they find themselves in is unlikely to help.
For example, the lesson of Union Carbide is that it's OK to murder tens of thousands of people through incompetence and willful negligence. Other companies that spent more on safety were effectively punished for doing so, since of course they would have to spend more. This is why we still had Hydrofluoric Acid a risk of killing thousands and thousands of Philadelphians as recently as a few weeks ago.
Don't assume that corporations around the world are all run with an American mindset and according to principles taught in American MBA schools.
All it was missing is "MIT grad invents..." or "<insert_unrepresented_class> comes up with"
Seat width is something people should be talking about as much as seat pitch.
I doubt it has anything to do passenger comfort; else as you said they would have addressed the armrests issue.
I dream of the day that like fat people can have two chairs next to each other, tall people can have the chair in front of them removed for leg space. :+)
It'd be nice if the seat height were adjustable, but that would just result in the seats breaking down more often I think. I have long legs, but not that long a torso for my height, so a slightly elevated seat would be nice for me, but other tall men might be miserable.
I was merely hoping to correct a possible misreading of the article's (literal) contents, which I see in retrospect makes me to inadvertently appear be the subject of xkcd 386 :)
That's a pretty weird statement. It's not really abnormal to want to go to the toilet every 1-2 hours.
It may not work. It may take some reiteration. The parents may politely explain a learning disability in which you just engage with them. The parents may give you a stinkeye. Oh well, kids need to learn how to interact with the rest of their world, and the parents who you seem to be most worried about are probably the ones whose kids need it the most.
Usually I find that parents are reasonable and appreciate other adults treating their children like small, learning humans rather than tiny monsters.
The point was a far smaller one, that writing off poor public behavior as "well, autism is increasingly common now" is a pathetic cop-out, which does no favors for those who are actually autistic.
It's rare that one knows more about how to handle children than their caregivers, and "reminders" from strangers are often wrong, besides being insulting.
When I purchase an airline ticket, my arrangement is with the airline, not with their other passengers. They owe me nothing. It is not a public space. I can no more shush their children (or such-by-proxy) than I can call up another customer of my internet provider and ask them to use less bandwidth so that I get more.
I can ask the flight attendant to speak to the parents about the kid kicking the seat, but if the flight attendant declines to fix my problem, my ire is best directed at the airline declining to provide me with a comfortable environment.
They could institute a no-children rule, or a "your children must behave or you will be banned from flying our airline" rule, just as Hacker News chooses what kind of behaviour to moderate and what to allow. But the airlines openly tolerate this behaviour for their own reasons, and I choose to do business with them.
I strongly suspect that although they are tactful about it, what they would like to say if I complain is, "If you will just give me your credit card, Sir, I will upgrade your ticket to first class. Come this way, I will pour you a flute of champagne."
We celebrate naked capitalism at the expense of customers here. It turns out, airlines do as well.
I don’t think anyone in this thread is saying that travelers should be entitled to shush other people’s children, which would be incredibly rude. You’re perfectly entitled to go through the intermediary of the airline, but I think polite engagement along the lines of what GP suggested would be a positive feature of society.
[0]: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/regulatory/statutes/age-d...
Conclusion: Sharing an environment with other people's children statistically sucks. We may win some victories here and there with tact, diplomacy, and/or luck, but that's the reality.
And I am especially sensitive to this, as when I fly to Europe and am stuck in this cacophony for six to eight hours, I usually have a presentation or essay I'm working on and could really use a distraction-free environment.
So I'm both irritated and feeling stressed that I can't work effectively. This is suboptimal personally and professionally. So what are my options?
I chose to fly economy. I could have gotten rich and bought my own plane, but no. I could have spent money flying first class (which filters a LOT of families out). But no. I chose to fly economy, where the price of my ticket was low PRECISELY because families are also flying economy, subsidizing my ticket.
If an airline offered an "Absolutely no kids allowed" flight for anything except a vacation charter, the seats would be more expensive. So instead, they offer first class, and "comfort economy," and if I want a seat not subsidized by unruly toddlers and crying infants, that's what I purchase.
It's harsh, but the universe is no more "fair" to me than it is to people who want affordable housing in San Francisco.
My personal bug-bear is neighbours spilling over my seat. Having wider seats would help but some people really do need to be using two seats not just one.
If I need to be comfortable, I upgrade to comfort economy. If I need to save money, I think about my cost saving and remind myself that these children (in Canada, at least) will grow up to pay for my health care.
The last thing I need is them growing up to think that old people are irritable and annoying to them!
i (try to) remind myself of this when i get annoyed with other people on both roads and walkways.
I usually reply with mild sarcasm, "Shame we both picked today to give our chauffeur the day off."
But for the most part, children being children are entertaining.
If they're American kids, on the other hand, prepare for hours of sheer misery as they have zero discipline and their parents refuse to curtail their horrible behavior.
I'm 6'1" and all I want is like 2 more inches of knee room, like planes used to have, so that when the person in front of me drops their seat back it doesn't go right onto my knees. I have nowhere to go other than widening my stance and encroaching on the people on either side. The new ultra thin / no pading seats some airlines use really hurt when they land on your knees.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/...
"[Average length has decreased from] 35 inches before airline deregulation in the 1970s to about 31 inches today. During the same period, the average width of seats declined from 18 to 16.5 inches..."
This solution poses a whole new set of issues already mentioned, but the real solution in my opinion is to relegate a few rows with only 2 seats for overweight people, priced accordingly. Public perception wouldn't allow requiring overweight people to book those seats, but I think a lot of overweight people would out of courtesy and their own comfort. They would be available to anyone who wanted the extra width as well, but you'd be less motivated to pay extra for it if you didn't need it.
That would be a barrier to access based on disability, and would open up an entire host of legal liabilities for the airlines. I have to assume that's why they haven't done it yet.
I tend to do this for Southwest as well - If the plane is already fairly full, I'd prefer to pick my neighbors and take a middle seat rather than risking it further back in the plane.
Don't planes generally already have this? Most planes I have been on have the business class (or whatever it is called) seats at the front, with just two seats beside eachother, and then the rest of the plane being three seats. I guess it is not targeted at people who are overweight, but it is available.
Also, it doesn't help that in America, fatter people tend to be poorer.
I fly with two little kids (and a tiny wife), any of which can lay across a row of three seats like a bed. If you can find a non-full international flight, that can make all the difference. Unless of course you have hobo spikes on the plane.
Pass.
Or just charge less for the middle seat.
What was I thinking suggesting they charge less for the middle, lol
1. https://www.cnn.com/2014/05/02/tech/social-media/apparently-...
But how about addressing the issue economically/psychologically? Make the seat cheaper! People put up with discomfort happily if they think they made a good deal.
(250k flying miles a year here)
Why would people need to pay more for them? I see nothing here indicating these seats would actually cost the airline more. They don't actually take up any more space (they would take up a few extra inches, total, for the whole length of the plane, because of the offset, but that's not significant). These aren't some kind of fancy seats that cost a lot more to manufacture.
If the goal is to get these seats on NEW airplanes, well okay. But the refresh of a fleet takes a LONG time.
Longer trips Air France has 1-2-1 seating on the 777 in business class, really like that for long flights alone for work. Enough to accept a 1 hour layover in Paris for it, because it means you can sleep all night on your way to Asia or on the way back from the US.
I’d feel trapped in based on the arrangement shown in the images there.
Both. I want to go back to reasonable seat sizes even if costs go up because as it stands I'm choosing to fly less and less with the current seat pitch. In fact I did pay $100 out of pocket to upgrade my seat to economy plus and was lucky to snag a business row seat, or so I thought. It was in fact a miserably crowded experience.
Seriously I'm glad we had this discussion because despite living in Houston I think I'll by flying Southwest in preference to United from now on.
https://www.businessinsider.com/america-airline-legroom-guid...
If you have ever flown economy, you will know that it's standard procedure for the middle and aisle seat to move to the aisle if the outer seats have to use the restroom.
Even with straight seating there's no way to exit (in economy) without vaulting over multiple people, and this assumes they aren't using tray tables.
It's a three seater that comfortably fits two. Not only is it a tight for for three, but there are no arm rests, meaning you are squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder the whole time.
I've taken other trains (notably NYC) that don't seem to have this. Only the MBTA seems cursed with this layout. Wouldn't be a huge problem if the train wasn't standing room only (for at least a half hour) meaning people are squeezed as-is.
Don’t get me started on the inane layouts of the upper levels of these cars (half forward and half sideways seats, guaranteeing each passenger getting on and off a crowded train car has to trip over 12 sets of legs).
The sad thing is that rail cars cost hundreds of thousands and are customized to each railway customer. A bit of cheap mock-up engineering before purchase could allow maybe 10% more passengers per car, and much faster and more pleasant loading and unloading.