Originally Posted by
fastair
The devil is in the details. UA seat has 6 inches more pitch, AC's has 1.35 inches more width. The herringboneallows more seats along the aiels, but less seats across the cabin. You make it seem like AC gives you 2x the seat, when in reality AC gives you less square footage. (At least via seat guru's dimensions) UA gives you 19.5 more square inches of space (1,444 on UA vs 1,424.5 on AC)
I think you calculation is suspect. Pitch refers to the distance parallel to the fuselage from seat to seat. But with the seats herringboned, as they are on AC, the area of each individual seat is not pitch multiplied by seat width. The seat width is not parallel to the fuselage. Also, we need to be careful about where seat width is measured. There is width for the hips and three is width for the shoulders.
Here's another way to calculate. On AC, 70 inches times the fuselage width (call it "w") contains 4 seats. On UA it is 76 inches times "w" containing 8 seats. So on AC it is 70/4 = 17.5 x w square inches per seat. On UA it is 76/8 = 9.5 x w square inches per seat. So there is 1.84 times more airplane floor space per seat on AC.
Seem right?