On the drive from our hotel to the Los Angeles airport for our return trip, I started chatting about seat size and space with another passenger — a woman who had worked in the offices of an airline company for years. She told me I was not imagining the difference. She had seen plans over the years as newer aircraft were designed. They were larger and seated more passengers, yes; but part of the method of having more seats was to shave a bit off the previous seat sizes.

Our next trip was a domestic one in Australia in 1994. Since then, starting in March 1998 we have had one or two trips almost every year — domestic and/or overseas in our part of the world (Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, New Zealand). We have flown with major and budget carriers and on the whole have been happy with all of them.

Of the ones we have used, there is only one with whom I would probably not fly again. When we returned from a flight to Hong Kong (1998 or 1999), I went to our travel agent and said, “Look at me.” (At this point I held my arms out and made a complete circle.) “I won’t tell you my weight; but If anyone comes in here who looks like me and wants to fly economy class with XXXXX, DON’T LET THEM DO IT.”

The seats were made for Asian builds, not for mine. I have intentionally not named the XXXXX airline because for smaller people there would be no problem and the seat size and configuration on that airline might not be the same today. That’s why I said I would “probably” not fly with them again.

We have been very impressed with all of the Asian airlines with whom we have flown.

Merna

In checking out aircraft types, there is no standard for seating even in the same aircraft. You need to see how many seats are on each type of aircraft at each airline because seat pitch (dist between rows) differs. East Asian carriers typically have many more seats than the same aircraft flown by US carriers because the average size of passengers differ.

In the end, a high number of people make price their only selection criteria. What’s not considered is that a Charter airline won’t take care of you if one of their few planes is broken or delayed whereas scheduled carriers will try to place you on other flights. Also, a discount airline may require you to fly many legs to get to your destination; every intermediate stop is an opportunity for maintainance or weather problems in addition to an already long day. A carrier like JetBlue may generate a lot of buzz, but are the typical two hour delays to taxi out at JFK worth it?

Some airlines have started blogs for customers to comment as a way to get feedback on improving operations. Check them out!

By the way, as I saw people in the chat room mentioning, 95905 isn’t a zip code. I just put down whatever numbers came to mind.