Originally Posted by
sltlyamusd
The thickly padded MD-80 F seats I found very comfortable. But the pitch is much better now.
There's the key words - Thickly Padded.
As one who logged his 1000th flight in 1981, I found even most coach seats of those days to be more comfortable than any of the domestic light weight "First Class" seats of today.
While I can't argue with Alaska's great seat pitch in First, these cheaper quality re. comfort "First Class" seats are just a byproduct of airlines trying to squeeze profits in the post deregulation world.
Anybody here remember when Alaska introduced the 727-200 in early 1979? Remember how bright the interiors were? The seats were upholstered in this orangish/yellowish fabric that would be unthinkable by today's somber standards. But boy were they comfortable! And Alaska's Gold Coast Service - complete with introductory 1 gram gold ingots - was pretty nice, too.
I don't know how much extra weight those 12 original 727-290 seats weighed relative to 12 of today's seats on the 737-800 s. No doubt the newer seats weigh less, costing the airline less in fuel per flight. Extrapolated out over an entire year, perhaps the savings are noteworthy.
That said, how much more would fares have to rise systemwide to cover the difference if Alaska were to reinstall plush seats equal to those comfortable seats of old?
And more to the point, would you be willing to pay the difference versus AA, DL & UA charging less while offering today's cheap seats?
On a side note, I remember how excited I was to check out those Virgin recliners on a nice long transcon DCA-SFO flight. OMG!
They were hard as a rock and nowhere near as comfortable as they looked.
I was fortunate to log a passel of flights in the 1980s in those First generation cradle style First Class sleeper seats aboard the likes of SQ, TG, CX, QF, TE, UT et al and they were all uniformly more comfortable to sit in because of their excessive padding. Ironically, excessive padding worked against a good night's sleep in the first generation lie-flat seats, so now we've got these excessively firm Business Class lie-flats that are more comfortable to sleep on, but less comfortable to sit on.
More and more, I'm finding for domestic travel I really enjoy having a bedroom on a train, complete with a comfy chair AND a comfy bed. And real sirloin steak for dinner.