The ever-shrinking airline seat
In recent years everyone's been talking about "seat pitch" – the distance between each row of seats. As materials have gotten stronger and lighter, seats have been getting thinner and thus an apples-to-apples comparison of seat pitch from decades ago (when we always seem to imagine things being better) with today isn't really possible. With most modern planes today, airlines have standardized on 29-31" of seat pitch in economy, 34-38" in economy plus (and most American domestic "First" Class), and 58" or more in long-haul Business and First Class. There's not a lot changing on this front until we get to the standing/saddle configuration that we keep getting rumors of. But the urge to cram more people into the plane is never-ending and next frontier is seat width. The trend has been to try and put another seat into each row: as much as 11 across in the A380 Emirates wants, and 10-across in the 777. To do that, seats and aisles have ...