Attention All Passengers Read Online Free PDF

noted, Broadway theaters don’t
double-book seats: “No other (legitimate) businesses sell the same product to
more than one customer, so why do airlines?” It’s an excellent question, but
only industry apologists defend the practice, citing the vague complexities of
yield management practices so vital to the airlines’ elusive profitability. They
also note that passengers with refundable tickets often no-show for flights,
thus leaving the airlines with empty, unpaid seats.
    The good news is that the DOT requires that
airlines provide those bumped against their will with denied boarding
compensation, and in 2011 Secretary LaHood announced the DOT had doubled the
limits on these amounts.
    Meat in the Seats
    Industry executives have had an attitude
about airline seating for generations. In fact, designers once eagerly met with
Eddie Rickenbacker, the famed World War I flying ace who became CEO of Eastern
Air Lines, to show off their newest seat cover fabrics for the Lockheed Electra.
Rickenbacker’s legendary response: “I don’t care what you cover the seats with
as long as you cover them with assholes.” Boy, have the latest crop of airline
execs gotten good at that.
    Even Ralph Nader, who arguably knows more about
customer satisfaction than anyone in America, sums up the airline industry in
this way: “It’s about the consumer mistreatment. You need to buy one seat for
your head and torso and then another seat for your knees.”
    Obviously so much of the flying experience comes
down to legroom. In fact, when it comes to airline seating, it’s specifically
about something called pitch , an industry term for
the front-to-back measurement of the distance between seats. SeatGuru.com is
completely devoted to airline seating, so I asked Jami Counter of TripAdvisor,
the site’s parent company, about the big squeeze. He agreed that full airplanes
are affecting passenger contentment, and not in a good way: the more crowded the
plane, the less comfortable the seats. “Load factors, that’s the biggest
factor,” he said. “Overall, that leads to a negative perception for passengers.”
He added that most travelers will suck it up on short flights of two hours or
less, but expect more comfort on longer journeys: “At SeatGuru, our sweet spot
is the medium- to long-haul flights. The three-to-four-hour market.”
    I wonder if seats have shrunk in recent years, but
Counter advised that, for the most part, U.S. domestic carriers have “stayed
constant” with economy class seat pitch of about 31 to 32 inches on average. So
which domestic airline earns kudos? It’s no contest, since one carrier provides
seat pitch of 34 to 38 inches in economy: “JetBlue is the best by far.” (This
was confirmed by Consumer Reports last year, when
our airline survey ranked JetBlue at the top for seating comfort, and eight of
ten carriers received low scores in that category.) And which is worst? Once
again, there are no serious competitors since one airline is offering just
28-inch pitch: Spirit. Counter said, “That’s just cruel.”
    But legroom is only half the battle—there’s also
seat width to consider. Counter explained that evaluating width makes for an
apples-to-oranges comparison, because some airlines offer slimline seats, newer
lightweight models that offer more room. He also contended that the manner in
which seats recline affects passenger comfort as well.
    In 2002, Consumer Reports
Travel Letter ’s annual review of the best and worst airline seats
included a report on a British ergonomics firm that found most standard airline
seats are “totally inadequate” for larger passengers. While seat width generally
falls in the range of 17 to 18 inches, an anthropometric table comparing average
butt sizes worldwide indicated America ranked first—no surprise there—but at
20.6 inches, that’s a pretty tight