AIRLINE
SEAT SPACE
Cruel
and unusual
punishment?
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By
Shirley
Streshinsky
For
three long hours last spring, frequent fliers Marie Plette, her
husband, Mark, and their infant son were crammed into the packed
coach section of a plane that sat on a rainy runway at Chicago’s
Midway, waiting for a storm to pass so they could begin the four-hour
flight to San Francisco. They arrived in the Bay Area in high dudgeon,
declaring the airline’s cramped seating a form of cruel and unusual
punishment. Their complaints, added to a crescendo across the country,
signal that the flying public’s tolerance for sardine-can seating
has finally neared zero, causing a growing number of carriers—American
Airlines most notably—to rip out rows of seats so they can trumpet
“more space in coach.”
Coach
seats on U.S. domestic flights are usually either 17.2 or 18 inches
wide; on longer flights, economy-class seats on wide-bodied planes
tend to be slightly larger, up to 18.5 inches. (A seat in an average
economy car is 22 inches wide while an ordinary office chair measures
19 inches.) Boeing, which provides most of this country’s domestic
fleets, claims that seat size has not shrunk over the years and
in fact is not likely to change. What is changing is the other important
dimension, what the airlines call “pitch,” the distance between
rows. In coach, the industry standard is 31 to 32 inches from the
back of one seat to the back of the one behind it. By comparison,
business-class pitch on long hauls is 38 inches or more and can
go as high as 60, while first-class ranges anywhere from 38 to 89.
Klaus
Brauer, who surveys 90,000 passengers every year as Boeing’s resident
expert on passenger comfort, is quoted in Air Transport World
as saying, “We’ve always known intuitively—and it’s correct—that
if we increase pitch, we make people more comfortable and if we
reduce pitch, we make people less comfortable. Seat pitch is the
‘throttle’ by which airlines can increase or decrease comfort.”
Every
carrier makes its own decisions on its fleet’s cabin configuration—how
many rows of seats to put in and where. It follows that the more
rows they squeeze in, the less the space between them. People who
have been flying for 20 years or more swear that ever since deregulation,
airlines have been cramming more and more economy-cabin passengers
into the same amount of space. Industry consultants maintain that
in the last decade pitch has dropped from 34 inches to 32, with
some carriers closing to a claustrophobic 31 inches.
American
Airlines reports that it is removing approximately 7,200 seats from
its entire fleet of more than 700 jet aircraft (about 6.4 percent
of coach capacity). This will increase pitch in 58 percent of the
carrier’s coach seats to 34 inches or more. Close to 98 percent,
the airline crows, will have seat room of at least 32 inches, “greater
than today’s industry standard—creating more coach passenger space
on a major carrier than at any time since the deregulation of the
industry more than 20 years ago.” So what may seem like an airline’s
bounty is really a retrenchment; even so, it is a bold move for
American Airlines. It is, in fact, calling the complaining public’s
bluff. If people flock to the carrier for the added breathing space,
other major airlines are apt to follow. If not, the bottom line
will speak right up and those 7,200 seats may go back in.
There
is variation in seat size and pitch among all airlines, but not
much. An exception is the midsize maverick Midwest Express, which
generally serves smaller airports. It consistently earns passengers’
top comfort ratings by choosing to make all of its seats what it
calls “first-class size, with economy prices.” A round-trip on Midwest
Express between San Francisco and Boston, with a change in Milwaukee,
was recently listed at $642. On the same dates, same destinations,
a direct first-class flight on United was $3,264, while a coach
ticket, with a change in Chicago, was $601. Most major airlines
follow United’s example; comfort costs, almost all the time. American
Airlines’ challenge could change that.
However,
according to Boeing spokesman Sean Griffin, the real indicator of
passenger comfort is neither seat width nor pitch. First, it is
on-time departure and arrival. According to this theory, if the
plane is late departing, the passenger who is worried about making
a connection or arriving on time will be tense and there is not
much the carrier can do to make the flight pleasant. Second, and
perhaps most important to creature comfort, Griffin says, is sitting
next to an empty seat. That has the effect of adding up to an extra
41/4 inches in seat width, according to the Boeing experts, as well
as a feeling of privacy. (For long flights especially, most people
prefer not to sit next to strangers.) Brauer says those lucky economy
passengers who manage to have an empty seat next to them “will also
report that the delays are shorter, that the meals are hotter, and
the drinks are colder.” If this is true, the young family who sat
on the rainy runway for three hours in Chicago in a crammed coach
section was destined to arrive at its destination steamed.
Competing
carriers are doing some fancy configuring to give more passengers
the best chance of getting that empty seat next to them, without
cutting down the “load factors,” thus profits. One way is simply
to reconfigure cabin interiors, replacing the 2-5-2 arrangement
(two seats on either side with five across in the middle) with 3-3-3.
According to Brauer, when a plane is 70 percent full, the triples
arrangement offers a much better chance of snagging that adjacent
empty seat. Of course, if the cabin is full all bets are off and
more passengers find themselves wedged into the middle seat, which
Consumer Reports Travel Letter labels one of three “key discomfort
factors.” (The other two: no seat recline and seating too close
to the lavatory.) Chances for that empty seat get better on Saturday,
midday, and evening departures.
In
the best and bluest of skies, if the Boeing experts have it right,
the most comfortable coach passengers sit next to an empty seat
on a flight that departs and arrives on time. An exception might
be the 350-pound professional wrestler flying across the country
in one of the new generation of 737s, one of the tightest fits in
the air. It is safe to assume that this man would prefer not to
have to gamble on getting that magic empty seat. If pitch is the
“throttle” with which carriers can increase comfort, then squeezed
frequent fliers think it’s time for all airlines to pull full back
and give them some coach space they can count on.
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