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Comment by pudgywalsh | Hacker News Reader

Because everyone sleeps soundly with bright blue LED lighting blaring in their faces.

I fail to see what's innovative about "we shoved business class seats into a narrow-body aircraft".

An A321 is still an A321.

Flying internationally in a single-aisle aircraft is under any circumstances torture no matter how you sugar coat it: "Come fly in our modern, innovative sardine can."

By the way BA did this years ago with their London City A318 which doesn't exist anymore because it was a failure that merely burned money.

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I never understood why the airplane size matters so much to an individual passenger. What's the difference to me, as a standard economy passenger, between flying internationally in an A321 or a 787? I have the same tiny seat either way. My knees are crammed into the next seat's back the same on both. I see this sentiment stated frequently and I just don't get it.

I don't get it either, but my guess is that the narrower plane induces claustrophobia at higher rates. If you're in a widebody, you can look to your left or right (depending on where you are), and see a decent amount of plane on either side of you. Not so for a narrowbody.

That flight was an odd bird from the outset. It didn't have the range to make NY in a single go, so it stopped in Shannon Ireland to refuel, where passengers deplaned, went through US Preclearance, and rebounded. IIRC, the US->UK return was non-stop. So one leg was longer than normal. Ultimately, it was dying on it's own when COVID drove the final nail into the coffin.

It was bad for IRROPs too. You'd have to schlep over to Heathrow in case of any issues. And you have to explain to your boss why you picked the weird oddball flight over the reliable Heathrow with tons of flights to New York

> Because everyone sleeps soundly with bright blue LED lighting blaring in their faces.

Apropos of anything else, and leaving aside intensity, almost all of the research into blue light and sleep points to it having nearly no effect. Maybe less surprising when one of the earlier corporate proponents of this was Luxottica who just saw another opportunity to make money.

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