Daze

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...576140,00.html

Frontier has announced plans to add 4 more seats per plane along with new seats that are lighter in weight. This will reduce seat pitch 1 or 2 inches.

oklAAhoma

Egads! That's depressing... I wonder who else will follow suit.

rockdoc

I guess they feel they need to do this for financial reasons, but they just took away the main reason I fly them. I fly CO for most of my trips eastward from Denver and F9 for those westbound. I may as well switch back to UA for westbound from Denver. Same seat pitch, but more places to go with my miles; especially internationally and Hawaii.

ksandness

Everyone else already HAS followed suit. It's F9 that's the follower here.

I've been flying for nearly 40 years, and it's NOT my imagination that the seats are more cramped than every before. (I go to some inconvenience to fly UA for its Economy Plus section.)

sdsearch

Same here, except in my case it was the only reason I ever would fly them!!! As presently configured, they had better seats than most other carriers if I couldn't reserve an exit row (or premium economy) seat on another carrier. That was the only reason for me to consider Frontier, given that I'm a miles collector (and their miles have too few partnerships to be that useful to me) and I'm not based in Denver.

I guess I'll figure out how to top off my Frontier miles to an award, redeem once on a no-longer-comfortable plane, and then forget they existed (dump the credit card, cancel my Frontier account so they no longer send me the useless emails which tell me nothing more than to check their website for my account update, etc).

CAL PHL FLYER

Its only fair..They are a low cost carrier..so..you can do without as much legroom in the future if you want to keep getting a cheap ticket..Great Idea Frontier!..they are making the most of their resources..and youl take the seat with less legroom anyway.@:-)

oklAAhoma

Agreed that seats (leg space and actual seats) are more cramped than ever before. My concern is that the airlines will decide that pax can get by with even less legroom than we have now...

oklAAhoma

Not I, said the little red hen. (btw this time I think the sky really may be falling.)

Khabibul35

With the extra seats they will increase award availability correct?

sparky81

I had the misfortune of flying on a US Airways (ex-America West) 737 last night and the seats were so close together that I litterally had to shove my small, 8 inch wide carry-on down to get it past the seat cushion to put it under the seat in front of me. Adding to my displeasure of course was the fact that, being 6'5" tall, my knees spent the entire 2.5 hour flight pressed into the seat infront of me.

Cramming in those four seats will probably end up doing the same thing that happened when Alaska added four seats to their 737-700s a couple of years ago, turn a tollerable seat pitch into a painfull experience, especially aft of the exit row.

I wonder how much longer it will take before people with long legs become "qualified persons with disabilities" under the ACAA and can start kicking short people out of the emergency exit and bulkhead rows? I can just see it now, little posts like they have at amusement parks stating "you must be this tall to sit in the emergency exit row" set up in the gate areas.

DKorda

You do have a choice. If you get status with UA you can upgrade to biz class or first class.. flights less than 2 hrs in coach, no biggie... any longer an upgrade is more bearable.

Daze

Great idea! Let's start lobbying for it now.

a330300

No one here seems to have picked up on this detail just yet-

The current seats are quite thick - the new Spectrum seats from BE Aerospace are slimline seats that are at least an inch or more slimmer than the current seating. Even with a 1 inch seat pitch reduction, we are looking at the same actual legroom, even though seat pitch has been reduced overall. The new seats will start to roll out at the end of the month, no word on the reconfiguration timeline.

DenverBrian

F9 is talking about adding four seats per plane...not six. Not a full row. I'm guessing the four-seat row will be at the exit to meet space requirements around the exits. I'm guessing the exit row will become BC/DE (no A and F seats), and roughly row 9 or 10 A and F will become the most sought after seats on the plane.

sparky81

Whether Frontier is adding just four or a full six, every other row will still be compressed to make room for this new row. Given the layout of their planes, there aren't any closets or other things they could remove to add in seats other than one of the aft lavatories. Actually, they could switch to a half galley in the rear, put one of the lavs against the aft bulkhead and make room for three more seats without decreasing their comfort levels.

We won't know for sure until the planes are reconfigured, but I would suspect that DenverBrian is correct in thinking that the seats will be added around the area of the exit row. This will create the illusion of there being two exit rows. However, like on most every plane that has the four seat window exit row, the seat pitch will be no more than an inch or so greater than the standard. While the window seats in the second row will have an enormous amount of leg room, since there are two paths to each exit there is no need for the row to be spaced further apart than normal.