Originally Posted by
Dave Noble
There isn't a great range of seat widths in economy ime - if someone is of a size that they may not fit in the width, then perhaps actually checking
Dave, how about some fact checking?
(But, I guess in this election period it is no longer fashionable..)
In Economy class, the difference can be more than
2 inches in seat width. (Source: seatguru.com)
Examples: Qatar airlines B777-300ER v.1&v2:
17", B777-300ER v.3:
18.5"
ANA: B777-300ER :
16.5"
One of the widest: Qatar airlines: B777-200LR:
18.9"
Yet another comparison for the same plane model, A333: AirAsia X:
16.5" (I saw 16.33" in other sources), while Air Canada:
17.8".
Tables:
https://www.seatguru.com/charts/shorthaul_economy.php (warning: there are some errors there)
How important are 2 inches? That's more than 10%.
"Airbus says it has commissioned research suggesting an
extra inch in seat width improves sleep quality by 53 percent." (Source:
https://goo.gl/cdQ9nK )
Yet another fact: Spirit Airlines regular Economy seats: 17.75", while "Big Front" seats, which, presumably they suggest for the overweight people (see the next link) and for which they charge up to $199 extra, are 18.5". (Source:
https://goo.gl/kedZ9R )
I think these facts demonstrate rather clearly that for some people figuring out if they need or not to pay money for the extra seat is not that easy and may depend on the aircraft and airline (which may also switch the aircraft at the last moment).
While searching for this information, I found this collection of airline policies for overweight passengers (I've spotted some possible minor errors there):
https://goo.gl/h0vW7c .
I understand the necessity for the airlines to "draw the line" somewhere, but I also found an interesting statistics on how the airlines have shrunk the seats over time:
https://goo.gl/MlcECh .
And despite the efforts of various groups
http://fortune.com/2015/09/12/airline-seats-shrink/ and even aircraft makers:
https://goo.gl/cdQ9nK , the airlines are holding strong against any regulations that would mandate the minimum seat width (size).
A few interesting facts:
"When Airbus introduced its A380, it offered 10-abreast seating, giving each passenger up to
19 inches of hip space." (That was not too long ago, 2005) "In 2013, ten airlines fly Airbus A330 with nine
16.7-inch seats in each row, rather than the eight it was designed for."
"Although for almost 20 years, the standard setup in the back of a Boeing 777 was nine seats per row, in 2012 nearly 70% of the biggest version of that plane were delivered with 10-abreast seating."
Source (with references therein):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_seat#Seat_width .
So, maybe it is time for the airlines to back off? And to stop
squeezing money from the passengers?