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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.
Judging by images like these, today's business class is pretty much what economy class used to be in the 70s. Some argue that flying has become too cheap. I beg to disagree: flying in a humane manner has not become cheaper, it's just that you'd have to book business class nowadays.
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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!
Sporadic 1 day delays due to Eyjafjallajökull
Ha! Iceland... I had to google that name just to make sure your cat didn't walk on the keyboard...
No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
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.
There are websites that specialize in giving you the seating configuration for a particular flight. One is SeatGuru While they can change aircraft between when you book a flight and when the flight takes off it is pretty accurate. If comfort is important to you then you should be rechecking the seat map several times before the day of your flight and adjust your seat based on any changes. Often better seats will open up several days before a flight as people are upgraded to 1st class. You have to spend a bit of time if you want the best seating you can get. 2nd exit row, aisle or window seat are two of the best seats in economy. Book early and snag those seats.
Wish I could upgrade. My company will only book the cheapest fare (X or lower), which usually ends up to be about a $500 fare between Detroit and LAX. Because they won't pay for the upgrade, I have to wait for the day of the flight to do an upgrade, and the last time I tried, they offered an upgrade to business class for an additional $600, or first for $1200. I used to be able to use my miles to upgrade, but Delta changed the rules so that I can only use my miles to book flights. I'm always number 200 on the upgrade list because they take care of the families that got their branded credit cards before me (I only have 200,000 miles -- but somehow the people who never flew before have 250,000 on their account).
The other solution people give is to fly another airline. That's fine if you are in New York or California -- but in the midwest, there are only two to choose from -- United and Delta. Both are in a heavy competition to see who can be worse. Every airport within 250 miles of me only offers one of those two to any destination that is not Florida or Mexico.
But that's ok. I guess I deserve it. Every time I fly my knees swell up and look like and apple after a food fight because the 5' 3" housewife ahead of me deserves to lounge in comfort. I have an appointment to have the cartridge behind my knees to be scoped because they are torn up -- and I don't run marathons or do any activities that would produce that outcome (other than flying a few times a month). Being a healthy 6'4" with long legs is not easy if you need to travel in the USA for your job.
They ran that ad because they realized that if they could get rid of one row of seats, they could drop one of their stewardess, and save money that way.
Since that time, the FAA changed the rules on the number of people per crew member, so they lost their incentive to drop the extra row.
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.
Most seats no longer have enough room to open a laptop.
As a frequent flier and 6 ft tall, I can attest that airline seats have gotten to the point of cause widespread pain and suffering, including physical injury. There is not nearly enough competition in the airline industry to lead to improvements driven from capitalism. This is unfortunately the time where government needs to step in for the general well being of society.
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.
But as long as there are not so many problems as to damage their bottom line, they can just blame the incidents on the passengers
Maybe passengers can take the blame for fighting incidents. But probably not other problems that may arise... like medical issues.
It's long been known that flying in cramped conditions leads to a much higher risk of blood clots and deep vein thrombosis, particularly on longer flights.
The most common recommendation to avoid these problems is to move around more -- both actually getting up and walking around and doing various exercises to move your legs around while you are sitting. Making flights more cramped makes it more difficult to both -- when it's harder for people to maneuver in and out of a cramped seat, they are less likely to do it as often to walk around (particularly for older folks or those with more difficulty moving around, who are more at-risk for these problems). And if you are tall, these new seats may make doing any kind of leg motion in your seat nearly impossible for exercise.
This is not a minor issue. Average treatment costs for a year after a diagnosed case of DVT are $20,000-30,000, not to mention potentially life-threatening complications.
Right now the incidence is significant but still relatively low (maybe 1 in 4500 people who fly). It will be interesting to see if further restricting motion and cramming people in will increase these risks.
And if it does -- then the cost of cramming people into tighter seats is more than just the potential for some disagreements and fights. We may be talking about serious expensive medical problems, potentially resulting from airlines squeezing one more seat in here or there.
If you're speaking about european or asian flights then those have overcapacity due to massive government subsidies overbuilding the fleets, not from capitalism.
Who told you that bullshit? EU regulations forbid subsidizing transportation companies.
The reason for european economy flights being comfyer is that we have true competition in Europe, with several dozen companies, as opposed to the US where you have only 3! I choose y flight very carefully based on comfort as well as price!
Oh, and this EU law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Sorry to bring it to you that way, but your uncontrolled predatory capitalism brought your country into this situation!
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango