Why you’ll never fly in an airplane with those double-decker seats | Hacker News Reader

Why you’ll never fly in an airplane with those double-decker seats

arstechnica.com

13 pointsLinuxBender29 comments

I'm 6'6". Planes have basically always been torture chambers, and it has gotten noticeably worse over the years. I'm tall enough to where the person in front of me is automatically unable to recline their seat because my femurs get in the way. People tend to react to the news that they can't recline in one or more of three ways:

- Repeatedly and aggressively attempt to recline hoping that I will just stop being in the way. Quite painful for me.

- Getting up and yelling at me

- Waiting for me to go to the bathroom and then just leaning back anyway.

There was a time you could get an exit row or bulkhead if a flight attendant took pity on you, but those days are gone. Those seats are considered "premium" and cost money. It's a tax on tall people. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit by now.

Just looking at those double decker seats makes my kneecaps hurt. I can't wait to have someone's ass in my face for an entire flight.

> I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit by now.

Height isn’t a protected characterisric in general, and being tall isn’t recognized as an ADA-covered disability, so what would the basis of a lawsuit be?

Sure, its private discrimination, but on a completely legal basis.

> being tall isn’t recognized as an ADA-covered disability

There is no formal "whitelist" of "ADA-covered disabilities".

https://askjan.org/topics/Americans-with-Disabilities-Act-Am...

According to this, height is only not a factor if considered within the "normal" range. The fact that the distance between seats is slightly smaller than my femurs would seem to signify that the airline don't consider my height to be within the normal range, and I'm at the low-end of "really tall".

If we can agree that being above a certain height could be considered an impairment according to the ADA under certain circumstances, then consider that the ADA protects someone who has a "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities".

Besides the immediate physical discomfort, sitting in cramped spaces raises your risk of deep vein thrombosis while flying. Tall people are already more prone to DVT, and the spaces are even more cramped for us.

Tall people have been proven to benefit in all areas of life. You get paid more, better jobs, treated better, more sex.

You do not want an act which stops height discrimination. You are the massa in this situation.

Seats on airplanes should not be abled to recline. The impact for the passenger behind you is always negative.

I obviously feel the same way, but this is an extremely controversial topic apparently. The last time I posted this opinion, I got bombarded with angry 'I paid for the feature so I'm using it' replies.

Just set a mild recline to all seats and lock it in. Making them adjustable is just asking for conflict.

That is basically exactly what they do. The seats have to come up more vertical for safety for take off and landing. Other then that you can set the seat to a very mild recline position. There is only like what 1 maybe 2 inches of adjustment.

The adjustment is still enough to cause conflict - evidenced by it being discussed here.

The design of an enclosed space should be to minimise conflict. The fact that people will be entitled over either "right to recline" or "personal space" is just a point for unecessary conflict.

Keep it simple, keep it same for all.

Ditto, the extra 1 inch or so makes no difference to me. It reminds me of the close door button on elevators, maybe it has a placebo effect and provides some psychological comfort even though it does practically nothing.

I agree, but I also think it translates to a psychological discomfort for the passenger behind.

we trade a little life expectancy and comfort in airplanes but outside of that there’s a lot of upside so to speak

Same basically everything. I try to be a good patron and buy an emergency exit seat or a front of section seat, but those are always the first to go.

And even purchasing well ahead of time, I've been rebooked/reshuffled so many times and the airlines just don't care.

I wish everyone just knew how miserable it is before getting angry about not being able to recline. It's basically torture.

I don't know what the solution is. I would recommend just having a few 'tall person' seats and charging more, but people will just snatch those up the same.

My sister is a musician, and when she flies, she buys a seat for her instrument. She says that the airline invariably tries to sell the seat her instrument is in and check the instrument[1]. She also gets bumped to a later flight regularly because bumping one person is cheaper for the airline than bumping two people.

1: At first she got kicked off of airplanes for refusing to gate-check her instrument, even when she had a ticket for it. Switching tactics to "Give me something in writing that it is insured by the airline for $XX XXX" and you can have it fixed that problem because she wasn't saying "no" anymore.

Reading this comment I got flashback of "United break guitars" in my head.

Yeah, it's not just United either. Checking something that is both valuable and fragile is inadvisable. At least it was "only" a $3500 instrument in that case; my sister plays a Contrabassoon that is about 10x that price.

Damn, I liked the Skyrider concept. Even for someone that sits at a desk all day, standing for a few hours wouldn't kill me, and I'd do it for the right amount of savings. Transit riders do the Skyrider thing on a moving vehicle regularly, but without the seatbelt, chair or backrest...

> The same would be true with standing seats since they are spaced so closely together from front to back, and passengers’ heads would be much closer to the fuselage of a plane when using a standing seat.

3/4/5 pointed seatbelts for takeoff/landing would be the way to go here no? Flight attendants seats often have these. Planes can't decelerate that much in the sky.

Planes can experience shocking accelerations in the sky. People have died from head injuries sustained while being thrown around during extreme turbulence miles away from the nearest solid object.

I don’t doubt it. My point being that I think, on average the skyrider seat with extra belt point(s) would be safer than a standard seat and 2pt belt.

And even without the extra belt point, being closer to the thing in front that you hit might be safer than accelerating for longer into a further away thing. At least that’s how it works in reverse with headrests.

Good grief. Seems like a reasonable proposal for a 17th century slave ship but thats about it. The Ars comment about just horizontally stacking passengers is pretty apt.

At this point I just want to be sedated and knocked out when I get on the plane and then you can arrange my body in whatever configuration you want

Are there any disadvantages to providing all seats with a comfort level close to business class and charging a flat rate of, say, $1k to everyone?

Not everyone could afford the higher fares, so the airline could not operate those flights profitably.

Yes. $1k more for everyone, which prices a lot of people out of vacations. Additionally it makes planes far less fuel efficient per person, for an industry heavily criticized for its environmental impact.

Totally, but not all planes out there must be like that. Just a handful of flatrates would be enough to get them full on a permanent basis. I could be wrong though, but there must be a golden mean in which the flight is both profitable for a company and more-or-less affordable and comfortable for the customers.

Lots of talk about weight and who's obese. Bottom line, you have to build the planes for the customers you have. Never mind blamethrowing.

I’m surprised that the price of an airline ticket has not tracked the increasing weight of the average passenger over the last 50 years or so, since I presume payload weight is a significant factor in fuel consumption. I wonder if the average passenger payload for an aircraft has actually increased or not? Is it that some passengers are much slimmer thereby negating the effect of the contingent that has gained weight. Do heavier people not travel as much as lighter people?

I’m also old enough to remember this fatal crash, caused by exceeding TOW and botched maintenance.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Midwest_Flight_5481

Maybe the increased weight of passengers has been offset by increased jet engine efficiency?

Just a guess...I'm not sure if it's true...

There are many other factors that go into the changing cost of a plane ticket over decades. It's not just average passenger weight!

The difference is just not worth it on a per passenger basis. I looked into this to answer another passing curiosity some months ago. For a thousand mile flight the cost per pound is about $0.05.

Source: Based on this forum thread [1] the marginal cost per pound to fuel efficiency is about "0.0155 gallons per pound per 1,000 statute miles". Over a 737's life it may fly about 50 million miles [2]. Combining facts one and two results in a fuel consumption per marginal pound of 775 gallons. Current jet fuel prices are about $3.40 per gal [3].

[1] https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travelbuzz/712294-anyone-kno...

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/cox/2012/11/...

[3] https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/

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