Pitch imperfect

Pitch isn’t, of course, the exact amount of legroom you’ll have, because the thickness of the seat structure is subtracted from whatever the pitch number is. And that’s what the engineers and materials scientists at seatmakers worldwide are working on.

‘Quite a few airlines are starting to take their short-haul seats “prereclined”.’

After all, if there’s the same amount of knee space in a new seat pitched at 30in as there is an older seat at 31in, that saves enough space to add an extra row of seats on your average Boeing 737-800 or Airbus A320.

So where does this space come from? For such a tiny amount of space, there’s an incredible amount of engineering.

On the latest generation of shorthaul seats, like Geven’s stylishly named Essenza or Recaro’s less snappily-monickered BL3710, part of it comes from adopting a higher seating position, essentially changing the angle at which your femurs point away from your body, and making it more comfortable to angle them downwards – at least for short periods of time. This requires some smart engineering, since it changes the way forces act on the seat during certification.

Another engineering development involves moving the rear horizontal support structure forwards. At their most basic, most seats have two metal tubes running across each set of two, three or four seats. By shifting the rear one forwards, seatmakers can boost the amount of space available for shin clearance, which is an increasing problem given the fact that humans are getting taller. The tradeoff for seatmakers is strengthening other structures in the seat – which has to withstand 16g of impact to be certified as safe – to compensate for the horizontal bars being closer together.

New materials also carve out precious centimetres. Carbon fibre can be used, either in the entire seat or just in the lower seat back, but even less intensively engineered materials like the latest generations of moulded thermoplastics can provide enough structure for safety while also carving out legroom.

The problem with saving all this space at the knee, however, is that the seatback-to-rear-cushion measurement isn’t the be all and end all of inflight comfort.

With the new seats, a 29in modern slimline can be – and, your author can confirm due to the lack of seatback shapes imprinted on the knees of his 190cm frame, frequently is – more comfortable than a 31in older seat.

The new crunch point, though, is right in front of your face. The eyeball-to-seatback space is starting to be the place at which the real squeeze begins. That’s especially true when the seatback in front of you is ten centimetres closer than it used to be – and even more so when the person in front reclines.

On short-haul aircraft, the growth in size of inflight entertainment screens can sometimes make it feel like the seat in front is oppressively close. (This is, in fairness, a very nice problem to have.) Poor airline choices in the headrest area can also cut the feeling of space, since packing the seatback with magazines and inflight shopping guides can cut 3-4 centimetres out of your already limited vision.

Smart engineering options can help: Recaro, for example, owns a patent on having the literature pocket extend behind the table. But smart airline soft product design and a bigger picture view can help too: can the inflight magazine be slimmed down, or served on a seatback screen? Is it absolutely necessary? Is the glossy duty free encyclopedia more important than an extra row of seats per aircraft? How much should the seat recline, especially if some rows are prevented from reclining by bulkhead walls or exit seats?

Quite a few airlines are starting to take their short-haul seats “prereclined”: not only does it save weight and complexity by taking out the mechanism that lets every passenger move their seat independently, it also means that there’s less chance of inflight conflict as the passenger in front jams their seat into the knees of the person behind them.

Width, too, is a big spoiler: Airbus’s research suggests that for every 1in of width, passengers feel like the seat gains an equivalent to 1.6in of legroom in spaciousness terms.

The hard part for passengers is figuring out whether airline X’s 30in Airbus A320 standard is better than airline Y’s 31in Boeing 737 – especially when airlines often have multiple generations of seat on board.

Many have tried to increase the amount of information passengers have about their flights when purchasing. There’s still a massive opportunity for a clever disruptor to do so.