Two experts with inside knowledge of the airline seat industry– a vice president at a seat manufacturer and a nationally recognized expert in the study of body measurements — recently talked frankly about some of the reasons behind the anger and discomfort.
Are the seats getting smaller? Closer together? Are passengers getting bigger? Are we getting angrier?
Well, no. Yes. Yes. And its unclear.
Americans are getting bigger, says Kathleen Robinette, whos studied human body measurements for the U.S. Air Force for three decades.
But in general, the problems “not you — its the seat,” she says with a chuckle.
Since Robinettes first airline seat study for NASA and the FAA in 1978, she has a different perspective when she boards an airliner. “I always see all kinds of arms hanging out into the aisles. That means the seats are too narrow, and theres nowhere for the shoulders and arms to go except into the aisle because theres not enough room in the seat.”
When “you keep getting your arm whacked by the cart as it comes down the aisle,” dont feel guilty, she says. It happens to everybody. “And its because of the seats.”
And what about passengers grabbing the seat in front of them to pull themselves out of their own seats? Is that really a thing?Airplane seating has come a long way since 1925, when German airline seats looked like this.
“It can be quite annoying,” laughs Jeff Luedeke, a vice president at airline seat manufacturer TIMCO Aerosystems, maker of seats aboard Allegiant, Japan Airlines, RwandAir, and Spirit Airlines. Seat grabbing creates a challenge for designers, said Luedeke, who flies about a quarter-million miles yearly. “If the rows werent so close together that would probably prevent people from grabbing the back of the seat.”
In 1962, the U.S. government measured the width of the American backside in the seated position. It averaged 14 inches for men and 14.4 inches for women. Forty years later, an Air Force study directed by Robinette showed male and female butts had blown up on average to more than 15 inches.
“The seat is a revenue generator,” Luedeke says. “Normally if you look at a 737 or A320 there are three seats on each side. If you wanted maximum comfort you could do two on each side — and make the seats a lot wider.
But with the reduced head count the operational costs dont work out.”But the American rear end isnt really the important statistic here, Robinette says.
Nor are the male hips, which the industry mistakenly used to determine seat width sometime around the 1960s, she says.
“It’s the wrong dimension. The widest part of your body is your shoulders and arms. And thats much, much bigger than your hips. Several inches wider.” Furthermore, she says, women actually have larger hip width on average than men.
The industry used the male hip as a seat measuring stick “thinking that it would accommodate the women too, but in fact they dont accommodate the larger women.”
The result: Airline seats are approximately 5 inches too narrow, she says. And thats for passengers in the 1960s, let alone the supersized U.S. travelers of today.