Airline policies on seating for plus sized customers- your thoughts?

1NJParent
Tue, 27 Jun 2023 15:56:37 +0000

ucbalumnus:

It does not appear that economy class seat width and seat pitch have gotten smaller in absolute measures in recent decades

Not too long ago, the standard economy class seat pitch is 32". With the rise of ultra-low cost airlines (Frontier, Spirit, etc.) whose standard seat pitch is often only 28", even the major airlines have been gradually reducing their seat pitch to 30-31", with each new generation of airplanes they order. In addition, new seats also have thinner cushions (by about an inch or so), further reducing the distance between rows and thus packing more passengers into the same amount of space. In terms of seat width, there has been near universal reduction on widebody jets (B777, B787, A350, etc.), which are increasingly used on popular domestic routes.