Originally Posted by
Rebelyell
The 777 and 747 were "engineered" for nine-across seating. The 787 was "engineered" for eight-across seating. The airlines stuffed in an extra seat to squeeze out a little extra revenue, and I'm suggesting that the government should force them, through regulation, to go back to the old configuration.
The extra seat on the wide bodies does add about 11 percent more revenue, but not profit. There are substantial costs involved with serving 11 percent more passengers, so that net revenue gain is much, much less.
At the very least, if airlines are going to be allowed to fly with these super-narrow seats then we need some system that will provide statutory damages to those who suffer seat encroachment from obese flyers. The airlines should be required to provide passengers with a specific procedure to follow when dealing with a seat encroacher, and passengers who are harmed should get automatic and substantial damages of say $10,000 per incident. This will cause the airlines to address the issue.
Note that adding 11% more seats does not increase revenue by 11% either. Revenue management would change the entire pricing strategy, but a rough upper bound would be to assume that the 11% additional seats are sold at the lowest fare on the flight. In practice, it would be lower than this on average, with the chances of empty seats and the number of empty seats also being increased somewhat.
Originally Posted by
artemis
Hear, hear! A standard Economy Class seat width across all airlines would also make it easier for someone who's heavy (but not 400 lbs) to know in advance if they will actually fit in the seat. With economy class seat widths varying as much as they do, right now for the average person it's a guess (because they don't know about Seat Guru, and because equipment changes are a Thing). I don't want to buy a second seat because I thought the economy class seat on flight 1234 was going to be 16.8" inches wide, only to discover that in fact it's 17.5" or 18" wide and I fit it just fine. I also don't want to squish my fellow passengers because I guessed wrong.
One problem is that SeatGuru is often wrong or out of date. IME it's useless for these reasons.
Originally Posted by
nkedel
There are two issues; I think plenty of folks agree that large passenger should not be allowed to spill over into another occupied seat, and should be re-seated.
How the airline handles re-seating them -- where, when and whether they charge for it -- really isn't anyone's business but the larger passenger's and the airline's, and I'm not sure the Southwest model is the best one (especially given that other airlines in theory follow it, but enforce it so rarely as to have no predictability for larger passengers.)
Often an airline attempts to "handle" the problems caused by a COS by making the encroached upon customer move to a different and often less desirable seat, for example Y+ to Y- or much further back. Another possibility is to make a parent hold a lap kid that would otherwise occupy a seat and use the kid's deat for the encroached upon passenger. If no seats are available in the same (or lower) cabin, usually the encroached upon customer is told to either accept the encroachment or leave the flight, (probably) to be (costlessly one would hope) rebooked onto the next available flight. If no space is available that day, the victim can pay for his/her own hotel room, meals, etc.