lhrsfo

The moral of the story is not to believe everything you read and, perhaps, the further moral is not to believe anything you read on Facebook.

lhrsfo

Generally, I agree that it's primarily the airline which specifies these things. However certain aircraft are clearly superior to others - the most obvious example being the Airbus 320 family is more comfortable in principle than the Boeing 737 series. Its cabin is 5" wider - you can't cram in extra seats across, so 6 people (and the aisle) share 5" more space. Believe it or not, that's a noticeable difference. Likewise, certain cabin widths make for a more comfortable experience, ceteris paribus. The 330/340 and the 767 have a width which pretty well guarantees a 2x3x2 seat distribution. This is more comfortable than a wider plane which permits 3x3x3.

But the general public will have no idea of those matters, merely expecting, for example, BA to be comfortable, VS to be very comfortable and EZ and FR to be woeful. So EZ is regarded by them as comfortable and BA as uncomfortable despite the fact that their seating is pretty well identical.

Finally, the airframe manufacturers' brand is really only important amongst their customers - the airlines, rather than the customers. From another industry, but most people buy a mobile phone because it's an Apple or a Samsung or whatever, rather than because it has a particular type of third party processor.

jrl767

uh, no ... the 330/340 cabin diameter (17 ft 3 in) easily permits 2x4x2, whereas the 767 cross-section was specifically sized (15 ft 6 in) to accommodate 2x3x2

RustyC

The move toward the lower pricing is undeniable but I reject the notion that passengers are calling for seat configurations to be as badly crammed or for certain other things. A 29" minimum would be an improvement for Spirit and could be justifiable on DVT concerns alone. If the government set a floor then it might mean one fewer row on an A319, which I don't think would be catastrophic for fares despite some airlines' propensity to bellyache about being told to do anything by the government. When you're constantly pushing the envelope and ignoring common sense you're essentially saying you won't self-regulate and will keep up that behavior (if it helps profits) until some external force puts a limit on it.

Remember ValuJet? They figured they could cut corners on safety to save money and didn't get pushed back until people died in a crash (and then they acted like a victim of all the media publicity). That's what happens when you go too laissez-faire.

The long-term story in general, even before 1978, is a progression of more fuel-efficient planes that have lower cost per passenger-mile. Airbus seems to "get" that better than Boeing lately...if the Boeing execs were the geniuses they thought they were, they wouldn't have lost market share like this. The A380 has had problems but is trying to be the 747 size successor, while with the shorter hauls you see a lot of stripped A319s and 320s.

Seems ironic that the airline most dedicated to playing it straight on marketing, Southwest, is still Boeing, but that's the legacy. Spirit, OTOH, appears to really resist all-in pricing (can't hide mandatory fees) and wants to make the optionals as numerous as possible. Their dream is to advetise a $0 fare that prices out at $70 minimum per segment (including lots of bogus mandatory airline-imposed fees), and then of course there's the unbundled charge-for-everything ON TOP of that. The $0 is the "bait" but you get "switched" pretty hard.

Wall Street has been kinda down on the ULCCs lately out of suspicion that pax are adapting as best they can. The idea that some here have that it was a conscious consumer choice by pax assumes a much greater level of information and awareness than the pax likely had, but as more and more people have seen what that entails and learned the hard way, we could be seeing more awareness.

RustyC

I also don't think they check Seatguru for the info, though maybe after being by surprised on their first ULCC flight they start paying attention to stuff they could previously take for granted.

sbm12

The minute pax start consistently paying a premium to fly on an airline that offers greater pitch then that might make sense. As it is, however, far too many pax simply buy whatever is cheap, regardless of comfort. Are they "calling for" the seat configuration? Not explicitly, but they also won't pay extra for the other option. And it has been that way for a while now. AA's MRTC was just one example from a prior era.

What common sense is being ignored?

Are you suggesting that seat pitch is going to kill passengers? Or that the airlines today are actively ignoring safety regulations with their cabin configurations??

Or that fuel prices are coming up and that the network carriers are figuring out how to compete better. Much less about pax booking away or choosing to not pay the ancillary fees.

If informed passengers truly didn't want the "worse" product then they'd book away for the following trip. They do not. They book on price and schedule and everything else comes later.

84fiero

Part of the thing is that many passengers aren't informed. Even where the search results provide the aircraft model a lot of folks don't know the difference if it states "CR2" or "A320". Plus some infrequent leisure travelers don't, in my experience at least, remember a year or two later what model or even what airline they flew on that last trip. Nowadays the info is available, at least to some extent, so caveat emptor (though the sources for seat pitch and width aren't always 100% correct). I notice Google flights tries to provide the seat pitch in search results though I've never checked its accuracy.

However as you said, generally people will still complain and then knowingly go back to the same thing next time if it's cheapest. They probably also complain incessantly about their girlfriend/boyfriend, yet stay with them.

But even with all that, what percentage of said passengers would pay more for extra space? Clearly some number would as people do pay for E+, MCE, etc. seats. I don't believe all passengers would pay that same premium if the entire aircraft had E+ seating, though. So to me the current model of having the E+ type option along with regular seating seems to be a decent arrangement in terms of pitch (though not width usually) so there are options for both types of passengers.

Who knows maybe one day in the future the industry trend in seating dimensions will reverse for reasons we don't know yet. Or not. Personally, for shorter flights I really don't care about the seat dimensions or really any other amenities. It starts to become more important to me the longer the flight and with other factors like if it's overnight. I will consider paying more if I need to in situations where I want a better experience - how much more I'm willing to pay just depends. If the extra premium is more than I wanted to pay then I have a decision to make.

chgoeditor

I'd argue that it goes both ways. When there's a fatal accident caused by a flaw in the engine or the airframe, the airline -- not Boeing or Airbus or GE or Rolls-Royce -- takes the brunt of the bad publicity, and typically suffers the decline in revenue and market cap.

sbm12

Yup. Some do pay, and the airlines figured that out. But, generally speaking, not all will pay. It is a balancing act between passenger comfort, revenue, aircraft range and other factors to hit the "perfect" cabin layout.

trooper

Agreed.... and the only real way to move even closer to what EACH group want would be to have easily "convertible" configurations. I suspect such a thing is technically difficult/too heavy/whatever...or Im sure we would have seen it by now....

Scots_Al

Deleted.

sbm12

There was something of a mockup that does this on display at AIX in April 2017. Not that I expect it to be in service any time soon, but this is the closest to a truly configurable/flexible cabin setup for adjusting pitch that I've seen in a while. I'm the guy moving the seats around in the video and my "training" consisted of watching the manufacturer do it once. It really was that easy.

RustyC

It's a pain to respond to a slice-and-dicer but here goes (though I may not hit all parts);

You're assuming that they have to make a choice and I'm not sure I agree. Some of the third-party sites are now noting if seat pitch is less than 30" and of course there's Seatguru that most people don't know about but I suspect more will be paying attention to. Anecdotally I'm noticing that more Frontier "stretch" seats are selling before the 24-hour window (I'm in position to notice because as an elite with them I can upgrade at the 24-hour window, unless of course seats have sold out). We're only in the first or second inning of this one and information is power. But for most people it'll take that first flight and being surprised by A, B and C before they notice.

Well, for starters... A) The idea that anyone out there flies without needing to bring something, or that that could be a reasonable expectation. Or how about B) Passengers on average are heavier or wider, so let's make the seat narrower! Or C) even though cabin air is unusually dry and we have a 4-hour flight, let's charge for even water! (something Spirit does but Frontier doesn't). That kind of stuff shows a management that doesn't even see pax as humans, but as entities to squeeze maximized profit from.

That kind of laissez-faire mentality is already getting 'em in trouble in another area, family separations (because of not paying for seat assignments), just as I had predicted. It's amazing that they're so out-of-touch they can't see a PR time bomb like that one, but I guess it their corporate cultures if you're a junior exec who raises the point then you're a troublemaker who won't get promoted. Groupthink and all that.

If you want regulations, just keep ignoring common sense and pushing the envelope. It turns out that a lot of what people took for granted were industry standards that were never codified, but relying on airlines to observe a floor and self-regulate responsibly just is becoming too dicey. Am surprised I have to spell this out.

You'd have made a good tobacco lawyer back in the 50's and early 60's when the advertising was going full speed and they even had doctors in print ads or would say that menthol cigarettes were good for you. Where are all the dead people? I don't see any dead people!

DVT risks are just like the second-hand smoke in that they'll have to be proven many times over, over a period of years, to overcome vested-interest opposition. This article from Faux News (natch) tries to throw cold water on the idea, but even it has to admit potential for problems with window-seat passengers and groups with a higher risk. I seriously doubt their data included many 28-inch pitches, which for many people are immobilizing from the waist down or only permit one or two seated positions. The ULCCs assign seats randomly for anyone who doesn't pay the seat fee, and if you've seen seat fees on longer hauls even in economy for legacies like AA they've gotten ridiculous. So I don't think the usual caveat-emptor or blame-the-pax will eventually win out with this. It'll have to be studied five or six times as much as it would otherwise need to be to overcome opposition.


The key word you used there is "informed." Most people grew up not having to worry about all that stuff until recently. Airlines were much the same, people could assume they could bring a carry-on or would get *something* to drink, etc. "No frills" was Southwest and getting the plastic boarding cards they used then. Most airlines matched Southwest on fares and checked bags were still included.

In that environment shopping based on price made a lot of sense. Nowadays I've personally overhead people on the ULCCs who are on their first flight and feeling negatively surprised (comments of the "If I had only known" variety and realizing that the total bill might approach the cost of a legacy).

I don't agree that they're so price-motivated that they'll all suck it up and book the same thing again. Some will, but others will pay more attention. I've personally been in the 28-inch seat pitch on a 5.5-hour flight and decided never-again with that. Southwest is betting on that with their ad campaigns, and Wall Street has cooled on Spirit stock in part over concerns about that.

RustyC

The airline has the brand name that gets advertised more to the public, since the manufacturer sees the airline as the "customer". OTOH I think you've touched on an interesting point because it gets into how the NTSB operates. They do the painstaking work to figure out what happened and by the time they issue a report the news cycle has moved on. Usually the coverage of the report is low-key, even if it finds something that forces all airlines with that plane to do a maintenance task for every one of those aircraft they have. Such a thing would probably reflect negatively on the manufacturer but it always seems to be low-key. Like there's a certain coziness to the relationship.

Having only two major manufacturers also changes the dynamic.