(I have similar height and shoulder issues.) It may not seem like it at the back (economy class) but different aircraft are different, and sometimes airlines also lay them out differently from each other. For example look at the Boeing 777 initially released in 1995. At the time economy was laid out 3-3-3. Nowadays most airlines use 3-4-3. That is the difference between a 19 inch wide seat on Singapore Airlines, and a 17 inch wide seat on Emirates.
The aircraft to watch out for the most is the Boeing 787. With one minor exception, they all have one more seat in each economy class row than Boeing originally intended. In general the comment from those of above average height having been on one, is that they will never set foot in a 787 again! The Airbus A350 should be mostly alright on most carriers, but you will need to double check.
A weak rule of thumb is to favour Airbus over Boeing, as their cabin widths and historical choices have tended to result in wider seats in Airbus aircraft. In the US there are efforts to get regulation of seat sizing (under the guise of "safety"), and airlines are trying various things. But someone in the US who is ~1.9m is in the 95th height percentile. It is hard for airlines to cater for that last 5% without a negative economic impact.
There's no need for scare quotes here. There is a legitimate safety concern: airlines have packed their aircraft with so many seats that it's not possible, in an emergency, to evacuate safely and quickly. The usual certification procedure for a new type of aircraft calls for simulating an evacuation with half of the doors inoperable, and requires everyone out (literally out, not merely "queued up at a door waiting to get out") within 90 seconds from the order to evacuate.
And the argument is that while this is achievable in test conditions, the test conditions tend to involve cabin configurations less dense than what the airlines fly, which means the 90-second evacuation target cannot be met with the planes as they're actually flown. Enforcing changes to return to compliance with the 90-second evacuation does not require enacting any new seat-width or legroom regulations, which is why it's an attractive option for people who want to get something done ("enforce this existing thing" is easier than "draft and enact a new thing").
There are also concerns about survivability of high-density cabins, based on lack of room between rows; flight attendant seats are the place to look here, because they're designed to have a certain minimum amount of space available for a flight attendant's head to swing in the event of a sudden jerk of the body (as in a collision). The high-density passenger seating doesn't have this, and would almost certainly produce head and neck injuries in a real emergency due to everyone's heads smashing into seat backs.
For instance, the A380 evacuation test had 873 people get out in 90 seconds (https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2006/03/a3...), and I don’t think anyone flies a 800+ seat A380 today. I believe the densest A380 is the Emirates Regional configuration with 600 seats.
It's actually not the airlines who are being hypocritical here.
Hey, since planes basically never crash, maybe they shouldn't have any safety equipment at all? I bet you could reduce weight a lot by just marking sitting positions on the bare floor in economy. And you could provide hand-hold straps every so often for turbulent bits (we're acknowledging those, right?).
Strangely, there are relatively few opportunities to shift transport modes for intercontinental travel, other than trivial cases like crossing from Europe to Asia across the Bosporus, which some people do as part of their daily commute. Claiming that you're going to reduce deaths by moving people in aircraft versus cars? Even if aircraft were 100% safe, you couldn't move enough people through the current commercial aviation system to make a noticeable dent.
(Fermi estimate: 800 million passenger tickets in the US (2015), 350 million people make an average of 2 ground vehicle trips per day, that's 700 million * 365 = 255 billion. If airplanes can carry 25% more people (and they can't) by perfect substitution for automobile trips, that would reduce it from 255 to 254 billion trips. 1/255 fewer deaths. That's best case, because the US already makes more plane trips per capita than any other country.)
[1] http://avherald.com/h?search_term=evacuation&opt=0&dosearch=...
One thing I do love about the 787 though is the big windows - tall people get a (edit: lol not 360) very good view around the aircraft if it's not too full.
This would allow consumers to make educated choices on the market
This should be better than a legislated solution. If it was regulated, airlines would focus on gaming the measurement process to provide the biggest number possible, even if at the cost of actual passenger comfort.
It's stupidly uncomfortable for tall and broad people to fly, and while one user here in this thread commented about that: 'I would pay for a larger seat,' I'm making a guess they then downvoted the comment, 'make bigger passengers pay more.'
My problem is the length of my thighs. I can't really put them straight, they act as natural recline blockers. That's the nasty part - it's not about being comfortable, I have paid for extra leg room. I just demand that the damn planes be large enough to sit without pain. I don't demand comfort.
But tickets should be sold per sit per weight. And that should include the passenger and all the luggage. So a 50Kg person travelling with 5Kg of luggage shouldn't pay the same as a 150Kg person travelling with 40Kg of luggage. One should pay for 1 seat/55Kg, the other for 1-2 seats/190Kg.
Airlines only care about the number of sits and total weight so the pricing should be done accordingly. And before anyone screams discrimination, I physically can't fit in most airplane seats (or can, but in a contortionist style not fit for more than a few minutes of usage). I have to pay for upgrades or extra leg room at every flight. I'm sure nobody thinks discrimination in my case.
It's the same with leaning back the sit where it takes space from a seat you paid and it turns a usable seat into an unusable one. Which is why many times I prefer to fly low cost and pay for extra leg room then to go for "premium" airlines and have to be squashed in my seat because I risk being greeted by airport security after landing if I make a fuss.
If you're tall and skinny you really draw the short straw of air travel. You still get to pay full price but without actually fitting in most places in the plane. Nobody feels any moral obligation to care and no chances of losing height in the gym.
A 777-300ER is 170,000kg empty. Divide that equally by 350 passengers and you get 485kg per passenger. We'll compare a 75 vs 100kg passenger which brings the totals to 560 and 585kg. ie a 33% passenger weight increase only makes a 4% total weight change. Note that these are best case numbers and using real world ones is a heavier weight to allocate, and even more trivial weight change per passenger.
This puts in context what kind of deal a 150Kg person gets compared to a 50Kg person. They pay the same price, one gets to carry 100Kg of extra weight. And again, this is a treatment that is only extended to overweight people. A very tall person or an invalid get squat in terms of "good deals". It's only discrimination when we're talking about extra kilograms.
Weight on an airplane is always a major consideration. But even if it weren't, fairness doesn't always have to come attached to profit.
[0] https://www.skyscanner.net/news/tips/check-in-luggage-size-a...
That means oversize or special handling due to size or weight.
Also most air freight goes in the belly of passenger planes - more than goes in dedicated freighter aircraft. Your luggage is competing with that space. In addition it costs more money to handle luggage vs not handling it all.
Almost everything carried by planes - freight or fuel - gets charged by size and weight. The only thing that gets charged exclusively per seat is the passenger. For every passenger that weight 50Kg a plane can carry 100Kg of additional cargo compared to a 150Kg passenger. An increase in average passenger weight of 20Kg for a plane carrying 500 passengers means 10.000Kg less anything else it can carry or more fuel burnt. Both of these cost a lot of money.
Yet airlines are willing to carry the extra 100Kg for free probably because of the outcry coming from the millions of overweight people around the world screaming "discrimination!". Still they are not willing to give 1" of extra leg room for free or larger toilets although there's nothing one can do about it if they fall into these categories.
I think my point stands. The actual algorithm used to calculate is not important for the discussion as much as the concept: it's a fair way to charge for such a service that has hard limits for size and weight.
350k kg max take off weight -170k Kg empty weight -145k kg max fuel = 35k kg usable weight @ max fuel
35k kg / 350 pax = 100kg/pax which means passenger weight is far from trivial
My point was being overweight is free, being "overheight" or an invalid will cost you every time. I have to pay a lot more to get the same level of (dis)comfort that everyone else gets for free.
It's the kind of discrimination that people just let slide but it's discrimination nonetheless.
The restrooms are not a plane manufacturer thing. The changes happening are Airbus figuring out how to make them smaller. They have to be big enough for a disabled person, but Airbus figured out that you could have two smaller ones next to each that open together to meet the requirements. Galleys and restrooms don't make revenue, so everyone is figuring out how to make them smaller and free up room for more seats. You found one.
If the person behind me puts the provided a water bottle in the seat pocket in front of them, as they do almost every flight, it pokes, pushes, and rubs my back enough that I wake up.
The solution is easy, don't fly in economy.
Bloody poor people. They should be happy we let them our airplanes at all.
In the 1970s a transatlantic return was about $3000 in today's money. You can get a business class bed for that now. If you could afford to travel in economy in 1970, you can do it in business today, and business today is far above first class in those days.
If you work for a company that insists on flying you in economy and you don't like it, it's time to move job.
For short haul and domestic flights. For trans-atlantic flights it's often 3-5 times as expensive.
If this were any other industry, doing things that obviously cause harm to 5% of customers would be considered unlawful discrimination or assault.
Afaik height isn't a protected class. Amusement parks have been "discriminating" against very short and very tall people forever.
(I will admit that I peak at "mild" empathy for this problem. But even mild empathy gets me to the response above.)
The only relief for tight airline seats is a few drinks to dull the misery.
The worst part for me is my shins are long enough my knees & thighs are elevated off the seat, causing the blood to pool. I have wondered if economy plus allows enough leg extension to alleviate that problem.
I've flown on it once. It's not as nice as a real bed, you can't fully stretch out without sticking your legs into the aisle, but it's a heck of a lot nicer than trying to recline in a normal economy seat.
I don't know exactly how much it cost, since someone else had bought the tickets for me, and may have used frequent flyer benefits to offset the costs. I think you basically pay the cost of each extra seat, so it's not cheap, but cheaper than upgrading all the way to business class to get seats that recline all the way to flat. If you have someone you're comfortable sharing with, then you only pay for one extra seat for the two of you.
Not many people will pay for business on their own dime (business class generally not worth the multiplier -- it's a captive market for consultants and the wealthy), but some might consider buying an extra seat an extra seat if the price is right.
It's completely miserable on a transpacific because I arrive so very exhausted.
Still, business is WILDLY more expensive. There's no intermediate step to paying several times more. Is actually sleeping worth a few hundred dollars to me? Yes. A few thousand? No.
But in a lay-flat seat, I can easily sleep for 7 - 8 hours (though still need a couple glasses of wine to kick-start it since bedtime on the plane doesn't usually coincide with my body's clock)
A quick look on the Uk-singapore route shows business as 5 times the price as economy.
Also, let not forget Air NZ joke biz class...
That said I am keen for them to do 20hr flight direct to Europe. Somewhere like Istanbul, Poland or Finland seems feasible from what I researched.
Also, here as a couple, you might have this just for 50% more (booking 3 seats instead of 2; assuming price per seat is the same)
Example:
JFK to FRA, business class, A380 lie flat: $1,996USD
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/premium-fare-deals/1894422-s...
That’s only a 2.3x multiple of the $875 economy fare.
I think the target price for the Skycouch seat is somewhat below retail for just buying a third seat, so in that respect it's a pretty good deal if you're already flying longhaul economy with a partner. I mean, I'd flat out pay the retail price to guarantee an empty third seat in a row, and Skycouch has other benefits. That said, while it's an improvement, nobody's going to have a relaxing time trying to have two people sleep lying down on that couch unless they're tiny, and the two people better be very comfortable with close contact.
In theory you can always just reserve and buy an empty seat next to you, but ticketing and check-in procedures are mildly trickier to guarantee that it'll stay empty. I've considered it for flying longhaul solo before but these days I'd generally rather just pay the premium for an upgrade rather than gamble with nonstandard ticketing arrangements.
Fuck I would even sleep on a floor if it was allowed, but there are “reasons”.
1: https://matadornetwork.com/notebook/how-to-travel-by-cargo-s...
Interesting thought
https://medium.com/@wouthermans/what-i-learned-when-i-quit-m...
I get that they have to cramp in as many seats into a plane as they can in order to get the prices down to a point where normal people are willing to pay for a ticket. But it's really such a pain in the butt.
Would I pay double the price for a ticket to get a bed? Probably not: long distance flights are already expensive. And knowing how everything on planes is smaller than in real-life, I'm sure whatever they'd sell me as "a bed" would not really be accommodating either.
As a consequence, I now just avoid these long distance trips. A pity for one who loves to travel but on the upside, it's better for the environment anyway.
Yes it costs more booking a hotel for a couple of nights, but it’s still probably going to be cheaper than upgrading to business class. You usually have to book it directly through their website (look for “multi city”) rather than through an agent.
I've never really had much luck.
Same boats for me exactly. My solution is just to get up and hang out in the aisle, or near the emergency exits whenever I feel like it. Sometimes I read standing up, I stretch, I even sit on the floor with my legs straight. I'm polite to the staff and other passengers, and I have never once had anyone tell me to stop what I'm doing.
It's great in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. An hour of stretching makes a BIG difference on those 14 hour back-to-back flights.
I'm over 6' tall. I've flown multiple different lie-flat products on long-haul flights (and will try out another one next month), and I've never been on one that was too small. I suspect because that type of premium-cabin seating is built with assumptions about the demographics of the customers (in other words, they assume the typical passenger in these seats will be male, and aim to support a range of typical male sizes).
What you're paying for in business class is the privilege of having a flat bed or a big comfy chair, on demand.
It's all relative. Suppose the cheapest flights were twice what they currently are. Let's say $350 transatlantic one way, or $2300 return on your flight from South Africa to the eastern US. Flights would still be affordable to the middle class, which despite your "peasants" wording actually makes up ~100% of cost-conscious flyers. We'd fly less often and complain - as we do now - that flying would be so much better if we had twice the space per person for the same price and spent some of that on gyms, creches and hot bunks.
But actually we live in that counterfactual! And it turns out we don't really want those amenities. Our collective expressed preference - and given the lack of variety across airlines, it must be almost unanimous - is to be squeezed tighter and get to fly intercontinental a bit more often.
Before the internet became the standard for booking travel, travel agents were often used to book flights. They could persuade people to spend just a bit more (around $10-$20) to fly on airlines with better food and more space. It worked!
As soon as sorting by price became the standard it became a race to the bottom. Airlines are only responding to market demand. The fact is everyone want's a premium experience but when it comes time to pay they only want the absolute cheapest fare. The travel aspect of a trip is now considered a tolerated annoyance instead of part of the overall experience. The same thing is happening with hotels as they eliminate services to offer cheaper rooms with nothing else.
Do you value quality of quantity you need to ask yourself. Is it better to have fewer long trips or frequent short trips you need to ask yourself.
Basically the market for airline flights is not a well functioning transparent market, so you cannot say "aha, the consumer preference is obviously the cheapest ticket at all costs".
Personally I would happily pay a little more for more legroom, but have found no good reliable way to find those tickets.
OR - a "freedom fighter" making a political statement while onboard an airplane.
Indeed if I was 2 by 2 I would say I should book 2 chairs, but inside EU, especially northern EU, a lot of people are tall and in NL (where I am from) often taller than me and yet the seats are smaller than a lot of asian airline seats where I am the tallest. If you have to fly for vacation or very sporadically then it does not matter too much, but if you fly a lot and for work, in which case you want to feel rested, it is somewhat of a pain to go through the same thing every time.
Then ofcourse, you can say 'pay more'; the unfortunate thing is that EU internal flight business class is just economy with slightly more legroom and a free middle seat for a looooot of money. While, again in Asia, business class on short flights, means large chairs (2-2 arrangements with comfy chairs vs 3-3 cheap feeling plastic mini chairs in the same A320) for less money for the same distance.
I don't fit, at all, in Economy seats, so a proper business class seat is my only option if I'm going to fly.
I tried booking Business flights within Europe last year, but after re-checking flight details several times, looking on SeatGuru, and a ton of googling I realised there just wasn't any(1).
Instead, I ended up getting trains and ferries (and the occasional train-ferry, thanks Germany/Denmark) to go Amsterdam->Oslo->Barcelona->Amsterdam.
It took a lot longer, but at least I was comfortable, and I got to visit a bunch of extra places in between.
e: (1) okay, there are some 'secret' ones where a long-haul international aircraft is re-positioned, but these are hard to find, subject to an aircraft swap or outright cancellation at any time, and on limited routes and dates.
The problem is business demand varies wildly - some flights will warrant 50 seats, some struggle with 5, sp the cabins are varied -- by eliminating extra leg room BA squeezed in 12 more seats, which is £500 on a full plane. They figures that was better than losing 1 seat in business which itself is £500, because most people travelling in business are paying for the schedule and thus don't have competition.
the train often works well on the continent - especially with sleeper trains. Eurostar is less appealing thanks to the security theatre, and Paris is a pain to change in.
You buy a super-expensive bed-cube on a 20-hour flight, then register your flight and seat and mark a schedule when it's available for seat-swapping. "Guests" can book in 15-minute increments (on-demand if the flight has Internet). During their time, you swap seats and get to know their seat-neighbors.
Assuming an hour on each end for take-off/landing, and 8 hours you'd reserve for sleeping, that leaves 10 hours at $20/15-min = $800 recouped.
Maybe frequent flyers get used to it or know how to prepare better for long fights, but I'll be making sure I have a layover from now on.
- Do lunges & pushups every few hours to prevent butt from getting sore
- Workout/Run the day before or morning. Don't oversleep, lean on having less sleep before the flight (6-7 hours)
- Don't bother doing any work. Find that book you've wanted to read for some time, read that.
- Pick an aisle or window seat, middle seat sucks
When you get to your destination, do the following:
- Take a 1 hour nap in the middle of the day. This resets jetlag so you can sleep on a normal schedule
If a chemical method is your thing, I've heard good things about motion sickness medication, but I've never used it.
The occasional SFO-NYC in economy where my upgrade doesn't clear is torture. I can't fathom doing my usual 10h weekly flight in economy seats. I fly 150k miles a year, on about 80 flights or so. Pretty much all in business or first. Paid by myself. It's really not as expensive as people think… I spend maybe $15,000 annually on flights. Optimizing judiciously is key.
I honestly do not care how comfortable and/or uncomfortable the plane is as long as it takes me wherever I want to go. I'd rather keep my wads of cash and spend them on stuff that make me happy.
Ok, maybe they take a couple seats out and put a treadmill, charge an equivalent cost.
I'm looking at tickets right now, $735 for economy, $3500 - $6000+ for business, $15,000+ for first class. Fortunately I have a lot of miles, so a 160K mile business class awards ticket is a possibility.
That's still out of reach of many people.
Put it off until you can pay for a premium experience which you'll enjoy more
I've vacationed in economy, business class, and first class, and the flight is the least memorable part of the trip -- I'd rather spend more money at the destination. For sure, a lay flat seat on a long-haul flight is fantastic compared to being strapped in a coach seat for 8+ hours, but unless I can pay for it with miles, I'd rather spend the money on a nicer hotel or longer stay (or just keep that money in my pocket)
And anyway even with the best possible credit card you have to be pretty rich to spend enough to earn enough points for a transatlantic business class flight for your family.
(That, and all the other points made in this thread - which are perfectly valid, and I say this as someone who has a tonne of miles and has flown long-haul business class for leisure...)
When it comes to seat width and pitch, though, that's all on the airlines.
I've yet to fly on one so can't claim one way or the other.
Yeah, I want a cheap flight, but if there was a small perk where I could physically lie flat for ~15 minutes at some point during the flight, I would pay for that. I haven't been able to really deload my spine for pushing 48 hours (aside from some psuedo-yoga stretching while standing) due to further connections and layovers and it sucks.
International flight is an amazing, painful miracle of science and technology. Maybe SpaceX's BFR will make it better :-) But I highly doubt we'll ever see a reasonably priced long-haul flight with a gym available to us peasants.