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> I've got to say just how absolutely miserable it is to fly for a long period of time on a full flight. (I have similar height and shoulder issues.) It may n

• craftyguy 8y ago
  > It is hard for airlines to cater for that last 5% without a negative economic impact. If this were any other industry, doing things that obviously cause harm to 5% of customers would be considered unlawful discrimination or assault.
  • austhrow743 8y ago
    If that was the case they'd just put in height maximums for economy tickets. Afaik height isn't a protected class. Amusement parks have been "discriminating" against very short and very tall people forever.
    • baddox 8y ago
      If you're talking about physical injury, then I don't think it would be legal for any 5% of your customers. Pretty sure injuring people is illegal regardless of protected class status.
      • refoundglory 8y ago
        Thats why airlines would have height limits - people who are not allowed on your airplane are not your customers and can't be injured by sitting in it.
      • aikinai 8y ago
        That's exactly why tall and short people aren't allowed on amusement park rides.
  • brandonmenc 8y ago
    Tall people make more money. Use it to buy a better seat.
    • majos 8y ago
      Eh, speaking as a very small man (5'2"), come on, there are many low-earning huge people, and better-than-economy seats can be bizarrely expensive. (I will admit that I peak at "mild" empathy for this problem. But even mild empathy gets me to the response above.)
    • madengr 8y ago
      Better seats are usually WAY more expensive than the slight earnings statistic for height. At 6’5”, I’ll do the Early Bird check-in (out of my own pocket) on SWA, or the economy plus on United regional jets. I cannot physically get my knees in a standard regional jet seat. The only relief for tight airline seats is a few drinks to dull the misery.
      • st26 8y ago
        That sucks man. I'm 6'2", my knees almost hit. When I first sat in the new thin seats, I extended my leg straight down the aisle. My foot reached well in front of the seat pan ahead of me. It was crushing to see that visual evidence of just how tight it was. The worst part for me is my shins are long enough my knees & thighs are elevated off the seat, causing the blood to pool. I have wondered if economy plus allows enough leg extension to alleviate that problem.
        • madengr 8y ago
          The economy plus leaves room between my knees and seat. On one of the regional jets, where the seating columns shift slightly, there is a single economy plus seat with a huge amount of leg room, and you can stretch them out.
    • throwaway413 8y ago
      Source?
• Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
  The higher cabin pressure of the 787 is amazing, though. I suppose if you're extra-tall it makes sense to avoid (or at least to check the seat configuration), but otherwise they're lovely aircraft.
  • reubenswartz 8y ago
    I've taken a couple of flights on the 787 and I would swear it makes a big difference. (Or am I just "placebo effect"ing myself?)
    • borkt 8y ago
      Its definitely a big difference. On a 12 hour flight to south america it was far more comfortable than any other similarly long flight I have taken.
    • s0rce 8y ago
      Its a big difference, basically the same as being at Lake Tahoe vs. Mammoth Lakes (if you happen to have been to these mountain places in California).
  • rogerbinns 8y ago
    The higher cabin pressure is happening on all recent (large) aircraft designs. It is a result of using more composite materials and humidity control. None of that matters when the seat is smaller than you are though!
• jannyfer 8y ago
  I was really excited for 787s at Air Canada, and soon discovered over multiple trips that the seat back is too thin and light. If the person behind me puts the provided a water bottle in the seat pocket in front of them, as they do almost every flight, it pokes, pushes, and rubs my back enough that I wake up.
  • bu0Ahcei 8y ago
    I totally noticed this same thing a couple of days ago! Damn!
  • isostatic 8y ago
    I was rerouted and downgraded to a KLM economy flight overnight last year, on an old 747. Same problem with the seat. The solution is easy, don't fly in economy.
    • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      Not-economy is often twice as expensive though. If it's for leisure then sure, you could opt to go somewhere else or keep saving for a more expensive flight, but if it's for business your employer probably doesn't want to spend twice as much.
      • dagw 8y ago
        Not-economy is often twice as expensive though. For short haul and domestic flights. For trans-atlantic flights it's often 3-5 times as expensive.
        • isostatic 8y ago
          And takes up 3-5 times as much room.
    • dagw 8y ago
      The solution is easy, don't fly in economy. Bloody poor people. They should be happy we let them our airplanes at all.
• jpalomaki 8y ago
  EU should make it mandatory for airlines to disclose the details of seating arrangement. How much leg room, width etc. This would allow consumers to make educated choices on the market
  • dmurray 8y ago
    It's not a secret. You can look up details like these on SeatGuru and other sites. This should be better than a legislated solution. If it was regulated, airlines would focus on gaming the measurement process to provide the biggest number possible, even if at the cost of actual passenger comfort.
    • rustcharm 8y ago
      Make passengers with extra circumference and weight pay more.
      • wink 8y ago
        I'm big and weigh more than average - and seat width has never been a problem. My problem is the length of my thighs. I can't really put them straight, they act as natural recline blockers. That's the nasty part - it's not about being comfortable, I have paid for extra leg room. I just demand that the damn planes be large enough to sit without pain. I don't demand comfort.
        • close04 8y ago
          If you don't fit in the seat you'll most likely have to pay for an additional ticket anyway. Of course there are cases where the "big guy" just slightly overflows over the neighbors and in that case they're SOL. But tickets should be sold per sit per weight. And that should include the passenger and all the luggage. So a 50Kg person travelling with 5Kg of luggage shouldn't pay the same as a 150Kg person travelling with 40Kg of luggage. One should pay for 1 seat/55Kg, the other for 1-2 seats/190Kg. Airlines only care about the number of sits and total weight so the pricing should be done accordingly. And before anyone screams discrimination, I physically can't fit in most airplane seats (or can, but in a contortionist style not fit for more than a few minutes of usage). I have to pay for upgrades or extra leg room at every flight. I'm sure nobody thinks discrimination in my case. It's the same with leaning back the sit where it takes space from a seat you paid and it turns a usable seat into an unusable one. Which is why many times I prefer to fly low cost and pay for extra leg room then to go for "premium" airlines and have to be squashed in my seat because I risk being greeted by airport security after landing if I make a fuss. If you're tall and skinny you really draw the short straw of air travel. You still get to pay full price but without actually fitting in most places in the plane. Nobody feels any moral obligation to care and no chances of losing height in the gym.
• axaxs 8y ago
  As a 6'5 frequent flyer...I feel your pain. I generally do check seat widths before flying. That said, I much prefer Boeings over Airbus(but hey, anything beats Embraer). Maybe it's nostalgia, the 747 was amazing and had tons of room to get up and walk around. That said, even in the newer fleets I like Boeing, mainly because I physically don't fit in Airbus's excuse for a restroom.
  • kashprime 8y ago
    It might have been true in the past. You are absolutely going to hate the restrooms in the 737MAX.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • rogerbinns 8y ago
    Embraer do regional (ie smaller ~75 seat range) aircraft. The 747 etc was amazing, but 20+ years ago airlines considered 60% load factor to be normal. (Load factor is what proportion of the seats are occupied.) Nowadays 85% is what they target. Before virtually everyone could get aisle and window seats - now not so much! The restrooms are not a plane manufacturer thing. The changes happening are Airbus figuring out how to make them smaller. They have to be big enough for a disabled person, but Airbus figured out that you could have two smaller ones next to each that open together to meet the requirements. Galleys and restrooms don't make revenue, so everyone is figuring out how to make them smaller and free up room for more seats. You found one.
• ubernostrum 8y ago
  (under the guise of "safety") There's no need for scare quotes here. There is a legitimate safety concern: airlines have packed their aircraft with so many seats that it's not possible, in an emergency, to evacuate safely and quickly. The usual certification procedure for a new type of aircraft calls for simulating an evacuation with half of the doors inoperable, and requires everyone out (literally out, not merely "queued up at a door waiting to get out") within 90 seconds from the order to evacuate. And the argument is that while this is achievable in test conditions, the test conditions tend to involve cabin configurations less dense than what the airlines fly, which means the 90-second evacuation target cannot be met with the planes as they're actually flown. Enforcing changes to return to compliance with the 90-second evacuation does not require enacting any new seat-width or legroom regulations, which is why it's an attractive option for people who want to get something done ("enforce this existing thing" is easier than "draft and enact a new thing"). There are also concerns about survivability of high-density cabins, based on lack of room between rows; flight attendant seats are the place to look here, because they're designed to have a certain minimum amount of space available for a flight attendant's head to swing in the event of a sudden jerk of the body (as in a collision). The high-density passenger seating doesn't have this, and would almost certainly produce head and neck injuries in a real emergency due to everyone's heads smashing into seat backs.
  • dmurray 8y ago
    Planes basically never crash, though. So legislating less dense cabins under the guise of safety, while tempting for those of us who would like slightly more expensive and less crowded flights, is at best intellectually dishonest and at worst a direct path to more overall transport deaths thanks to increased car use. It's actually not the airlines who are being hypocritical here.
    • dsr_ 8y ago
      Let's not forget about the many deaths that typically occur in the traffic jams between Sydney and London. Hey, since planes basically never crash, maybe they shouldn't have any safety equipment at all? I bet you could reduce weight a lot by just marking sitting positions on the bare floor in economy. And you could provide hand-hold straps every so often for turbulent bits (we're acknowledging those, right?). Strangely, there are relatively few opportunities to shift transport modes for intercontinental travel, other than trivial cases like crossing from Europe to Asia across the Bosporus, which some people do as part of their daily commute. Claiming that you're going to reduce deaths by moving people in aircraft versus cars? Even if aircraft were 100% safe, you couldn't move enough people through the current commercial aviation system to make a noticeable dent. (Fermi estimate: 800 million passenger tickets in the US (2015), 350 million people make an average of 2 ground vehicle trips per day, that's 700 million * 365 = 255 billion. If airplanes can carry 25% more people (and they can't) by perfect substitution for automobile trips, that would reduce it from 255 to 254 billion trips. 1/255 fewer deaths. That's best case, because the US already makes more plane trips per capita than any other country.)
• rajacombinator 8y ago
  This is great info. Airlines should publicize and market on stuff like this more often but it’s generally not easy to find out stuff like this!
  • slapshot 8y ago
    Seatguru has extensive details on every plane and major carrier flight (down to which 777 variant and how recently remodeled).
• ttul 8y ago
  But... the 787 has higher air pressure so you don’t feel dry AF at the end of the flight. The carbon fiber body allows for higher cabin pressure - a life saver IMHO.
  • cylinder 8y ago
    It's a huge difference maker. 16hr flight felt like a train ride.
    • ambicapter 8y ago
      Chiming in here-the 787 made LA to Sydney feel easier than Boston to LA.
  • peteretep 8y ago
    But not as compared to the A350 or A380
    • narutouzumaki 8y ago
      How so if I may ask?
      • avh02 8y ago
        IMO - only flown the A380 a few times, but never felt turbulent (may just be my luck). A350 is quiet AF compared to the 787 (flew them back to back on a flight through Qatar) One thing I do love about the 787 though is the big windows - tall people get a (edit: lol not 360) very good view around the aircraft if it's not too full.
      • peteretep 8y ago
        A350 has best cabin pressure, then 787, then A380, but they're all pretty good, and they're all pretty quiet too, compared to older planes.
• maurits 8y ago
  1.84 and the 3-3-3 787 is by far my least favourite long haul option.