[metafizikal]

While having a guaranteed wider seat is nice, I've never found the width of coach seats to be all that terrible -- it's the lack of leg room, and the airlines continue to have sole discretion on how many rows of seats they'll jam in to these new planes.

[Someone1234]

I've given up complaining about legroom, all I hear back is the same tired "just pay quadruple for business class!" But realistically it would cost significantly less for the airline to increase seat pitch to comfortable levels. For example:

Airbus's A321: 141 Economy Seats in sets of 3x, or 23 rows on each side of the aircraft. 31" pitch.

If we take out one row of 3x seats, that's 1.34 inches of additional pitch, if we take out two, that basically turns it into Delta's Economy Comfort (34" pitch). So how much is six seats going to cost?

I grabbed a random Atlanta -> New Orleans on an A321, total one way ticket cost for 6x tickets is $561. If we split that between all the remaining 21 rows/63 seats on one side of the aircraft, that is $9/seat.

For $9/seat we could all be sitting in economy comfort. Based on $93.5 one way, that is less than 9% surcharge.

Heck, sell one side of the aircraft at 34" pitch and $9 more, and the other at 31" pitch and $9 cheaper. Everyone wins.

I'd pay $9 more. I cannot afford to pay $405 which is the cost of business class by the way.

PS - These are back of napkin figures, not an academic study. Take with a pinch of salt.

[adrianN]

But then you couldn't sell economy comfort anymore. You have to take that into account in your calculation as well.

[Someone1234]

But the airline is also using less fuel. They're now transporting 6 less passengers and any luggage (even carry-on).

It also reduces stress on boarding, reduces some fees the airline pays, and while staffing cost per passenger increases, the airline's profit per passenger increases in kind.

Plus a lot of airlines don't even offer an Economy comfort class, and even fewer do on all of their aircraft.

The biggest likely impediment to this isn't the economics or business, it is that reseller sites only focus on price. They won't even tell you what the seat pitch/width is, they'll just tell you that seat A is $135 and seat B is $150.

[reubenswartz]

This is why I miss American Airlines "more room throughout coach" that they had ~20 years ago (am I really writing that?). You'd know that you'd get an almost comfortable amount of legroom. If it was ~$20ish more for a long flight, totally worth it, especially if you want to take your laptop out.

Of course, the real thing is that customers are voting with their wallets, and they generally prefer as cheap as possible.

[Diederich]

<mostly offtopic> My 16 year old son is flying through 5feet 10inches in height. I'm 5-7, and my wife is 5-10. He obviously gets his 'tall' from his mom.

Anyway, he's been complaining a lot about sitting in the back seat of our car. The car in question, a Model S, is, as I understand it, known to have fairly good back seat legroom, and we don't ride with the front seats far back.

The point is this: in so many ways, it's fucking glorious to be short.

I can sit on Caltrain or a jetliner and work fairly comfortably with my laptop. That's an epic, life-long advantage.

In trade? Well, I have to ask my wife or son to get things down from the top shelf.

Totally worth it.

[thaumasiotes]

> My 16 year old son is flying through 5feet 10inches in height. I'm 5-7, and my wife is 5-10. He obviously gets his 'tall' from his mom.

The contribution of tall mothers to height in sons is deceptively large, because women are quite short compared to men. Using your figures and some stylized assumptions:

American mean male height 70 inches.

American mean female height 66 inches.

Father 67 inches = 70-3

Mother 70 inches = 66+4

Heritability of height 0.8

Expected value of son's height is (70) + ((-3+4)/2)*0.8, or 70.4 inches, taller than either parent.

Reversing the heights of the parents gives the same result for the son (it's a substitution of (0+1) for (-3+4)), but people are much less surprised by a son who's slightly taller than his average father than they are by a son who's much taller than his father and even taller than his very tall mother.

[thaumasiotes]

Followup comment: this assumes that the standard deviation of height is equal for males and females. In reality, the male deviation is larger, which means that an inch of mother height contributes more than an inch of father height does.

[dsfyu404ed]

The back seats of some cars are fine. The back seats of others are like being hauled around in a stagecoach, even with enough leg room. I'm not sure where rear seat comfort fell on Tesla's priority list. On one hand you expect a premium car to feel premium regardless of what seat you're in but on the other it's not marketed as a family hauler.

I've never encountered anything worse than the back seat of a 4th gen Altima. Something about it it just nauseating Given a choice between an old pickup with no AC and manual steering in the summer and rear seat of a 4th gen Altima I'd take the truck almost every time.

[exhilaration]

While you may not care very much about it, the airlines know they can use "wider seats" to appeal to the growing number of larger individuals [1] around the world. That phrase alone might be enough to get those individuals' travel dollars (or rupees) over their competitors. You can bet Boeing and Airbus are stressing this in their presentations to the airlines.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/health/obesity-study-10-p...

[EliRivers]

Seat tilters. That's the biggest discomfort for me. The person in the seat ahead tilting back. If there was a seating section that didn't tilt, I'd take it. I'd even pay a little extra for it.

[GilbertErik]

Exit row if you don't want someone reclining in front of you, or bulkhead if you don't want someone in front you. There's always First when you don't want _anyone_ in front of you.

[toomuchtodo]

Bulkhead seats. Seatguru is your friend.

[reaperducer]

And when they're already all sold?

Or when, like happened to me, you get involuntarily relocated from the exit row seat you paid extra for? (Without compensation, since it was done by the flight crew during boarding and not in advance. Thanks, Singapore Airlines!)

[toomuchtodo]

Sometimes it's unavoidable. In your anecdote's scenario, I would perform a credit card chargeback.

[EliRivers]

You're lucky they didn't drag you out of your seat and have some off-duty moonlighting local police thugs beat you senseless :)

[radicalbyte]

The summer I flew with RyanAir. The seats were smaller than the last time I flew but it was so much better. There was more headroom than on other planes and the seats didn't recline.

It's fantastic, all airlines should introduce it.

[xur17]

Some of the budget airlines have seats that don't tilt at all - I believe the default tilt is slightly more than normal, but they aren't adjustable, which is nice.

[lozaning]

Buy yourself some 'knee savers'. My 6' frame is such that if Im behind you, you're already not going to be moving your chair back much, if at all, before my knees are in your way. For $20 now some jack hole is slamming his chair into some plastic clips instead of my knees.

The end result is the same either way for the person in front me, so I feel no guilt in using them. I also make a point to never recline my own chair.

[reaperducer]

I don't even bother with the knee savers. I just use my knees.

I'm tall enough that in coach my knees make full contact with the seat in front. I just keep them that way for the first half of the flight, and the person in front of me assumes the seat recline is broken.

And if they manage to recline anyway, I make sure to hold my food or drink or reading material directly above their head while I eat, since they're pretty much in my lap anyway.

[kylec]

I’m guessing you’ve never been an overweight person, or had to sit next to an overweight person?