Staying Fit
A new law that requires airlines to set a minimum size for seating was signed by President Trump on Friday. The “Seat Egress in Air Travel (SEAT) Act,” part of the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Bill, gives airlines a year to set a minimum for seat width and the space between seats.
But no one is expecting the industry to boost passengers’ personal space by much. It might simply make today's tightly packed seating the official minimum.
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It's a bad combination: Americans are bigger, seats are smaller. Airline seat widths have dropped from around 19 to 20 inches in the mid-1980s to roughly 17 to 18.5 inches now. Seat pitch — the distance from a point on one seat to the same point in front or behind — has shrunk as well, from about 31 to 35 inches in the 1970s to as low as 28 inches on airlines like Frontier and Spirit.
Add in crowded flights and expanding waistlines (nearly 40 percent of Americans are obese, about a six percent increase since 2007-2008, according to a recent study in JAMA), and passengers are understandably grumpy. Ninety-three percent of flyers want wider seating, according to a July 2018 survey by the Nielsen company.
And yet, depending on what's decided with this new law first passed by Congress, the airlines could make seats even smaller. A company called Aviointeriors has introduced the SkyRider, a seat that’s more like standing than sitting, says Paul Hudson, president of advocacy group FlyersRights.org. The seats have backs, but Hudson compares it to sitting on a stationary bike. The idea? To cram in more passengers, the pitch between SkyRider seats would be 23 inches. Hudson's group has argued that a tight fit makes it more difficult for passengers to evacuate the plane in case of emergency
Whatever happens, let's face it: Airplane seats are never going to come close to being easy chairs.
So, if you can't or won't pay your way out of economy class, how can you make flying bearable? One option, of course, is to tilt your seat back to gain a few precious inches. But that means crushing the already-cramped passenger behind you.