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3 Recent Flights Make Unscheduled Landings, After Disputes Over Knee Room
The AP reports that American airplane passengers, squeezed by increasingly tight seating aboard planes, are lashing out, actually getting into in-flight fights over knee room: Three U.S. flights have made unscheduled landings in the past eight days after passengers got into fights over the ability to recline their seats. Disputes over a tiny bit of personal space might seem petty, but for passengers whose knees are already banging into tray tables, every bit counts. ... Southwest and United both took away 1 inch from each row on certain jets to make room for six more seats. American is increasing the number of seats on its Boeing 737-800s from 150 to 160. Delta installed new, smaller toilets in its 737-900s, enabling it to squeeze in an extra four seats. And to make room for a first-class cabin with lie-flat beds on transcontinental flights, JetBlue cut the distance between coach seats by one inch.
and this is what happens. Survival 101: you do not violate my personal space. EVER.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
You silly person, that's not how customers think. They will choose the cheapest offer, and complain about the quality. Your only hope is to not offer such cheap options.
Exactly. Well that and the details aren't spelled out by the airlines either . When you pick economy the seats may or may not be as advertised. The same airline and the same plane can have different configurations. Dimensions of space aren't listed anywhere when booking a seat.
Airlines are running into physical space issues. In their quest for ever more seats The airlines are beginning to ignore basic human needs. People need to move around. The tighter and more closed off you make people feel the more likely they are to get into arguments. This is not only true physically, but mentally as well. Arguments lead to fighting.
It is why Cities have always struggled. To many people to close to each other. The wealthy always purchase enough space to make themselves comfortable. However the poor can not and once you get so many people pressed together they fight. That fighting spills outward and you have a riot over a simple issue that is dealt normally dealt fairly.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I love how you put this into a "win/loss" context instead of finding a solution that everyone can live with. I especially like the part where you take great delight in causing pain to another human being. You're the problem here.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
And how, exactly, is she supposed to put her knees in any other position? The seats are not very wide. Unless she has an empty seat next to her (and, frankly, that's about the only way I can stand to fly any more), if she tries to bend her legs so that her knees aren't right in front of her, parts of them are going to be spilling over into and annoying the person next to her, or sticking out into the aisle and getting run over by the carts that the flight attendants drive trhough trying to get people to buy stupid duty free stuff.
The problem is not inconsiderate assholes. The problem is that 6'2" people are stuck in plane seats that they simply don't fit in. The problem is that airlines have designed coach seats to work for the bottom 30% of the population in terms of size, and are trying to squeeze the entire population into it. Something somewhere's gotta give. The person in back can blame the person in front for reclining their seat (as we've seen in this thread), or the person in front can blame the person in back for having knees (as we've seen in this thread), but *somebody* is going to be unhappy, because the situation is set up so that somebody has to be.
The problem is coach seating. It's just become too small.
You can't physically cram people any tighter, and fights are breaking out. Good. When they discover they're losing more on bad PR and flight diversions than they're gaining, they'll put back the inch or two - for a while. Now that they've reached bottom, the floor will just bounce from now on; the came couple of inches continually added and subtracted subtracted every 2-3 years, forever.
As far as blaming people for not buying an upgrade, has anyone saying this actually looked at prices? Last couple of times I flew, I looked into it; a little more room doesn't cost you 10% or 20%, it's more like double or triple the ticket price. Actually habitable travel accommodations are only for the wealthy.
Seriously, the number of people talking about how this isn't a problem, while simultaneously - gleefully - discussing what they'll do if someone tries to take their room, or someone won't let them take their room, pretty much dismisses any counter-argument to the idea that there isn't a problem.
There obviously is.
Airlines are running into physical space issues. In their quest for ever more seats
It's not the airlines quest for more seats, it's the passengers' quest for even cheaper fares.
If airline A has 34 inches of pitch with a $550 ticket and airline B has 30 inches for $500, the passengers will flock to the $500 ticket.
Passengers need to start making it clear with their wallet that they are no longer going to fly lower-priced sardine airlines.
If airlines were required to advertise seat pitch and width, then consumers could make that choice, but when even consumers that care about it have trouble finding out exactly which aircraft serves a route for their date of travel and what the seat configuration is, it's hard to blame consumers for not taking it into account.