Curmudgeon in Seat 13E

From Mark's Curmudgeon Corner

I itch to reduce your pitch!

You've just settled in to your seat for a 3-hour flight, placed your phone and Kindle and maybe your water bottle into the seat pocket in front of you, and suddenly WHAM! The person in front of you cranks back their seat with no warning or even a preliminary glance. If you are lucky, only your psyche is bruised as you ponder 3 hours of having your personal space compressed even more by the evolving airline economics over the past few decades. With less luck, you get a bump on your head, or maybe your laptop screen nearly wrenched from the keyboard. And in any case you more or less say goodbye to getting anything out of your underseat bag until the plane lands. And possibly to using your laptop at all without rotating it 90 degrees so the screen is on the tray table and the keyboard on your chest, like Gary Wright playing Dream Weaver.

Fly me high through the starry skies, maybe to an astral plane - or business class would do.

Unless you are fortunate enough to travel in business or first class, this Battle of the Recline is one of the most unpleasant, and in my opinion, unnecessary, ignominies heaped on the head of the airline traveler. Over the past 40 years, I have answered many airline surveys on 'the flight experience" (yes, I was a young curmudgeon once!) From back in the days when these came in the mail (with Business Reply Mail envelope included!) to today where they show up on you mobile phone even as the plane lands. Each and every time where there was a comment section, I have asked if they had done any studies on the cost benefit of reclining seats - cost to the person reclined into, versus benefit to the recliner. This is to me a no-brainer. I have said multiple times in a given survey "eliminate reclining seats!"

Dude, you spilled my mai tai!

Many other travelers are of a similar opinion, yet the industry has not really addressed this fundamental issue. A recent Washington Post article called reclining seats the "touchiest subject in all airline travel." A quick Google search turned up numerous incidents of planes being rerouted due to passenger "altercations" involving the reclining seat. Best headline I found, "Woman Chokes Man for Reclining Seat." Note that I do not advocate such violence!



My favorite story comes from 2014 when a passenger used a commercially available product, called the Knee Defender, which impeded the passenger in front of him from cranking his seat back. Ha! Airlines responded by banning the device. To recall Ross Perot -- "you're not listenin'!" And I would add "so why are you even asking?"

Seat blockers are better for your health than beta blockers!

The basic metrics of your airline seat are the width; the "pitch," which is the distance between the back of the seat in front of you to the back of your seat before it is reclined; and the "recline," which is how much reclining the seat adds to your pitch, and taketh away from the person behind you. Over the past 20 or so years, the average seat width has decreased from a little over 18" to 17", while I am sure the average beam of American passengers has steadily increased. The pitch has decreased from 35" to about 30". The average recline has not changed much, at about 5-6". All in the effort to add revenue by adding seats. These losses are significant in this game of inches. Think of adding 5 inches of free space in front of your face...or about losing it. If you don't recline your seat in response to the person in front of you, you lose 20% of an already very small amount of space.

For reference, the 30-ish inch pitch in your economy seat compares to about 60" in business class, and 80" in first class.

So ask yourself this question, when you recline your seat does it really make your air travel experience much better, in your 17" seat? How many "utils" would you give it (in economics-speak)? And the corresponding question, how many negative utils would you give having a seat reclined into you? To me, almost all other annoyances pale in comparison. The guy that puts his cowboy hat in the overhead bin on a full flight? There's actually a chance the flight attendants will step in. The person who decides it's a good idea to bring tuna salad in a Tupperware for an in-flight snack? Crank up the overhead air vent. The people playing videos on their phone without a headphone...well, that is pretty bad, too, so it ranks pretty high on the annoyance scale. The person in front of you who needs to stretch so puts their hands over the back of their seat and nearly hits you? Personally, I slap any hands that come over the top. The person who insists on bringing their small dog or worse, cat onto the plane, and then expects you to think it is adorable? I would be ok putting the pet in its carrier in the seat and putting that person in the hold with the luggage.

A malevolent dust bunny

I am not a tall person, so I can't imagine being 6' 4" and having to deal with this (...and also having to always see the top of the refrigerator, with all the accumulated dust, etc. which would trigger my OCD to start looking for the Windex and a paper towel.) Being un-tall has its benefits. But I digress.

Could this become a plank in the platform of a political party? Bernie pointing with his right hand and saying "Decline the recline!" It would get my attention. Maybe I will write to Boeing suggesting that they could possibly recover from the current bad press by finally addressing this injustice...?

2020 January