Between flying back and forth from New Jersey’s Newark International airport to Chicago’s O’Hare International airport several times a year (I’m a Jersey Girl who attends Northwestern University), and making the seven-hour flight to and from Madrid to visit my boyfriend at least three times a year, I consider myself an expert flier.
True—I’ve only tasted the luxury of first-class seating once in my life, but I fly with the masses, and my experience with five different airlines in the past seven months has well-acquainted me with many types of people—perhaps too many—as we squeeze into our economy seats.
So imagine my shock and alarm when I came across this New York Times article (may require sign-in) that brings to light Airbus’ hush-hush pitches to Asian carriers that they include the option of standing-room-only airplane seating! As if we weren’t already cramped enough—what’s next, laptop body-harnesses for standing business travelers?
The Times article also unearthed another dismaying fact: Carriers have already been cheating us of a couple of inches of extra leg-room. They are using lighter-material seating with slimmer seatbacks to fit six additional coach seats on typical Boeing 737’s and as many as 12 extra seats on Boeing 757’s rather than passing the saved space onto passengers.
And to think on my last flight back from Spain I just thought I had grown another inch. Ha!
While soaring fuel costs and pressure on carriers to avoid going into the red are bringing economy passengers closer together than ever before, I wonder how long frequent fliers, like myself, will put up with this annoying inch-trimming trend. (Keep in mind, carriers continue to invest a great deal of money in developing larger, heavier first- and business-class seats since they’re such large revenue-generators.)
Do you think standing-room-only seating would ever fly in the United States? Or are we better off shipping ourselves in sardine cans?
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Posted by: cheap oakley sunglasses | September 28, 2011 at 04:57 AM