Air Canada Rouge is 29”.

It is appallingly bad, uncomfortable, and - in my humble opinion - jeopardizes passenger safety. (Transport Canada and other regulatory bodies around the world would, clearly, disagree with that.). It’s claustrophobic for everyone. It’s uncomfortable for anyone over 5’10”. It’s dangerous, IMO, for anyone 6’4” or taller.

I moved my business from Air Canada to WestJet a decade or so ago entirely due to the introduction of Rouge and many of my flights getting “Rouged”. They deemed a few of my frequent cross-border work destinations ex-YYC as “leisure” routes, effectively cutting the seat pitch on routes I was flying from a quite comfortable Air Canada standard to the kneecap-crushing 29”.

I’m tall. I flew Rouge twice. It was awful.

And in the decade since, because of this, I’ve gone from an AC frequent flier to barely ever stepping foot on any AC plane.

Mind you, since then AC pulled Rouge out of YYC, and then even pulled most mainline AC out of YYC too. I fired them as my airline when Calgary was still an AC hub. Because of that 29” pitch on just some of their routes here.

Now, WestJet’s main product is going to become 28.5”.