Originally Posted by
sunshineaz
I really like the earlier suggestions about dividing the area in the bins, the tag identifying that the bag conforms etc. I would also like if they labeled the section for each seat and if the FA would take someone else's bag put in your space out and the person it belongs to told to put it in their slot or check it. Once everyone was on board, any empty spaces would be available for those with a need to use them. I just hate the free for all that currently is in force right now and prefer to not use it.
The problem with labeled "slots" is that there wouldn't be enough of them in Y. Typically a bin will hold 3 bags of maximum legal size, but such a bin is wider than the pitch of a single row. In other words, it occupies the space over more than one row.
Here's the math:
On many airlines, a carry-on bag can measure up to 22 × 14 × 9 inches. The bin is not tall enough to hold it standing on the narrow edge, so it goes in lying on a 22 × 14 side. If it's placed correctly, the 22-inch side is perpendicular to the aisle and the 14-inch side is parallel to the aisle.
So it occupies 14 inches of width. I'm going to call that 15 inches because of handles, slight misalignment, etc. Three of them - one for each passenger in a row on one side of the aircraft if Y has 3-3 seating - thus occupy 45 inches.
So how wide is the space above one row? Using a Delta 737-700 as the example, the seat pitch is 30 or 31 inches. So one bag for each of three passengers seated in one row on one side of the aisle would need 50% more space than there is above one row.
If an airline were to assign slots, there would be enough slots for only 2/3 of the passengers in Y. And that's if no space is required for safety equipment and no extra space is allocated to bulkhead rows.