Pitch down

Or that Virgin Australia’s refit Boeing 777-300ER offers not just an extra inch of pitch in economy (32” compared with Qantas’ 31”) but a more comfortable layout across the fuselage, with only nine seats in a 3-3-3 layout compared with 777s from Air New Zealand, Emirates, Etihad and others that squeeze an extra passenger in every row into narrow seats?

Pitch numbers are easily measurable and often readily available, so savvy travellers have for years hunted down this information and used it as part of their flight selection. Numerous web services have come and gone to try to help, with varying data quality.

Width information is harder, not least because airlines, airframers and seatmakers have an interest in fudging the numbers. Should the width of a seat be measured at the pan, or between the armrests? If the latter, what happens if seat X has armrests an inch narrower than seat Y? And what happens if seatmaker A uses one measurement and claims to have wider seats than seatmaker B?

When it comes to measuring seats, the industry needs to pick a standard, because the current default is that travellers end up thinking in terms of aircraft. The Boeing 787, for example, has been a massive step change in point-to-point flying and efficient longhaul travel, but its 3-3-3 economy configuration, used by every airline apart from Japan Airlines’ longhaul layout, is simply not comfortable for an international passenger mix.

But beyond simple pitch and width, what if a seat is pushed so far towards the sidewall of an A380 that passengers can’t put their feet flat on the floor beneath them because the curve of the fuselage gets in the way? That was Airbus’ proposal for a 3-5-3 configuration A380, a proposal which was roundly condemned in 2015 but which returned to this year’s Aircraft Interiors Expo, although Airbus very cleverly chose to show only the comparatively inoffensive set of five centre seats, hiding away the seats that abutted the sidewall quite so problematically.

More widely, if aviation fails to set minimum standards for seat size itself, it’s choosing to roll the dice with a variety of legislators — whose constituents all dislike airlines, and who will be the audience deciding whether the rules punish airlines enough — deciding to set the standards instead.

To improve their own experience in the meantime, knowledgeable travellers use a combination of aircraft type and number of seats per row to determine comfort when booking. That’s neither simple nor reliable, especially when aircraft type is by no means guaranteed and some airlines have both nine-abreast and ten-abreast configurations of the Boeing 777, to give just one example.

Yet, even while some of the online travel agencies and metasearch engines have used pitch data to help passengers make decisions based on comfort as well as price and schedule, none are using width as a factor.

The fact remains that passengers are not getting any narrower. Boeing’s seat standard is 17”, which is coincidentally the shoulder width of an extra small shirt size in Brooks Brothers’ US sizing. There’s a point at which airlines surely have to start looking at any gate area and wondering how many of the passengers milling around take an XS shirt.

Yet a new generation of seats is emerging as designers and seatmakers innovate within the economic envelope defined by airline accountants — and some of them are figuring out ways to provide more room even at the same pitch.

Whether it’s Air New Zealand’s Acro Series 6, LIFT by EnCore’s 737 or 787 seats, B/E Aerospace (now Rockwell Collins)’ Aspire, the Pitch PF3000 or various Recaro slimline seats, by carving out space at the knee and shin, seatmakers are somehow managing to add extra legroom — at least for passengers who find that hitting the front of their legs is the problem with economy seats. It’s unclear that there’s a seating engineering solution to the fact that today’s passengers are wider than 17 inches.