TATL Economy (dis)Comfort
Flew on 2012-02-02 on DL80 from ATL-BRU, on a 763, in EC. Seats were decent, and had a noticeable amount of additional pitch (legroom) compared to usual Y seats.
Flew on 2012-02-06 on DL57 from AMS-ATL, on a 333, in EC. Seats were also comfortable (with nicer headrests than the ones on the 763), but the seat pitch was *terrible*. I sat in 12J, companion was in 12H. We noticed when we sat down that the row 11 seats seemed closer than we expected. Before exiting the plane, I used a headphone cable to measure the seat pitch: it was 34". This means that it is approximately one *whole* inch more than the standard seat pitch in Y on that plane. It is true that the Delta websites says "*up to* four additional inches of legroom", so one inch falls within that statement... but if I had actually paid the premium for EC on this flight I would have demanded a refund. The additional seatback recline is nice, but not as valuable as the increased seat pitch.
In addition, choosing rows 10-14 on this plane for EC seems to be a terrible idea, because there is extremely little overhead storage for most of these seats. Seats 10A-B and 10H-J have no underseat storage (they are exit row/door seats). Seats 12C-D and 12F-G have the same issue (bulkhead). Seats 11A, 12A, 11J and 12J have no underseat storage, because the space underneath the seat in front is completely filled by the AVOD electronics box. Out of the first 16 seats in EC, 10 of them have *zero* underseat storage. On top of that, the grand total of overhead space for these sixteen seats is 4 half-length bins and 2 full-length bins (and the center row bins are not deep enough for a decent size rolling suitcase). We boarded towards the middle of the Sky Priority group (another story there... terrible gate crowd handling at AMS) and when we got to our seats there were passengers seated in all of rows 10 and 11, 12A-G and some of row 13... and all overhead bins back to row 14 were already full.
Granted, we made it home, and that is Delta's primary goal, but marketing these seats as 'preferred' for frequent fliers seems ridiculous.