There are cheap airline seats and there are comfortable airline seats, but there are no cheap, comfortable airline seats. Consumer Reports Travel Letter recently published its latest survey of airline Coach/Economy seating. And again this year, “Comfortable Coach Seat” remains largely an oxymoron.
First, let’s get to that “largely” hedge. One line provides an exception to the overall rule: Midwest Express, the small Milwaukee-based airline, offers near-First Class seating (and cabin service) at Coach prices. It’s the only line, large or small, that can honestly claim to provide a comfortable trip at Coach fares. With all the other lines, it’s varying degrees of bad. But there are differences–and those differences are sometimes enough to affect your choice of airline.
On a plane, comfort is largely a function of seat space, which is determined by three factors: the amount of front-to-rear legroom and upper-level reading and work room you get, the width of your seat, and the odds of your being trapped in a middle seat or next to someone who’s trapped in one (which I call the “middle-seat factor”). Seat width and middle-seat factor are pretty much fixed by the diameter of each plane’s cabin: Both vary significantly from one plane model to another but only occasionally from one airline to another:
– The best planes (widest seats and lowest middle-seat factors) are 767s and 777s. Most DC10s, L1011s, MD11s, DC9s, MD80s and MD90s are also fairly good.
– On most big lines, the worst planes you encounter–those with narrowest seats and highest middle-seat factors–are 727s, 737s, 747s and 757s. Even worse are those few charter-style DC10s, L1011s and MD11s that have 10 seats in each row instead of the usual nine.
Legroom, on the other hand, isn’t fixed by cabin dimensions. Instead, each airline decides how much room it wants to provide. The front-to-rear spacing of seat rows is called “pitch,” and typical pitch in Coach/Economy is 30 to 32 inches. But you do find variations:
– The best Coach/Economy pitch is 34 inches, available mainly on long-haul planes used by such foreign airlines as Air New Zealand, Canadian International, China, EVA, Japan, LAN Chile, Sabena, Singapore, TAP and Thai. On long flights, a modest 2-3 extra inches make a big difference.
– The tightest pitch on a U.S. line is Aloha’s 29 inches, while the worst I’ve ever encountered is 28 inches on Britannia and Monarch, two British charter lines.
– Most big U.S. lines give you no more than 32 inches–tight even on a short flight, very confining on a long haul.
You can’t escape the crunch by paying a higher Coach fare. For the most part, the big lines are no more generous with seat space than their low-fare competitors.
Of course, the story in Business and First Class is completely different. But getting into a Business or First Class seat requires you pay 10 or even 20 times the fare in Coach/Economy.
I don’t argue that airlines should improve Coach/Economy seating for everyone. After all, stuffing the maximum number of seats in a plane is one way airlines keep fares down. And some travelers will put up with the worst cattle-car conditions to save a few dollars.
But I do believe airlines should give consumers a realistic alternative to the cattle car–paying a bit more for a bit more room.
