
House lawmakers pass bill to regulate airplane seat size, legroom - prostoalex
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/09/27/airplane-seat-sizes-would-be-regulated-in-faa-law.html
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russellbeattie
I'm 6'3" (190.5cm) and I really hope this actually makes an improvement. I've
been on planes where my upper leg (from butt to knee) literally doesn't fit in
the space provided - and that's _without_ the person in front of me putting
their seat back.

Honestly, all I want is transparency: Every seat listed should have all the
stats about it posted with the ticket price, _by law_. Right now all consumers
have to compare is price and arrival times. If I was able to filter and sort
by legroom or seat width in addition to price? I would be able to make my own
decisions about my discomfort level in exchange for saving some money.

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lincolnq
Do you use Google's flight search? Somehow they have a seat-pitch measurement
(I have no idea how they get this data). I have used it to make decisions.

~~~
tyingq
See [http://seatguru.com](http://seatguru.com)

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40acres
Is there an economic term to describe the type of market that the airline
industry seems (from my point of view)?

It seems like operating an airline is such a capital intensive industry that
once you've established yourself you can 'ignore' certain norms of competition
and innovation.

Commercial air travel doesn't seem to have undergone much innovation since the
Concorde failed. Domestic flights don't seem much faster or more comfortable
than 10 years ago, and service has arguably gotten worse as usage has
continued to increase. Airline travel is still so useful that many customers
will simply take what is offered because in many cases travel by other means
is not possible.

It does not seem like a monopoly because there are many competitors, but I
don't know how to describe what I perceive in market terms.

~~~
ip26
IMO while I don't know the term, what has happened is buyers don't have good
transparency on what they are getting for their money, and as a result the
market has hyper-optimized for cost. When you aren't sure whether the more
expensive ticket is going worth it to you, people take the cheaper ticket.

The hotel industry sort of has this problem too- it's hard to know what you're
getting- but the concept of "stars" helps ameliorate the effect somewhat.

~~~
saryant
What transparency is missing? All the airlines disclose their seating
configurations. There's SeatGuru. Google Flights even shows the pitch right in
the search results.

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eeeeeeeeeeeee
SeatGuru is not run by the airlines and is not entirely accurate. It
frequently shows configurations that will not match your airline or specific
configuration.

If airlines wanted to be transparent and encourage competition, they would
disclose the seat measurement config alongside the price.

~~~
saryant
You're never going to get a perfect guarantee. The airlines have to have the
ability to swap aircraft at the last minute and that may mean delivering
different pitch than originally shown.

Do passengers want the extra inch or do they want to arrive on time? I'm
betting it's the latter.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Do passengers want the extra inch or do they want to arrive on time? I'm
> betting it's the latter.

On-time with a partial refund for not getting the seat they'd paid for is an
option, too.

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andrewla
Non-AMP link: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/airplane-seat-sizes-would-
be...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/airplane-seat-sizes-would-be-regulated-
in-faa-law.html)

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andrewla
It looks like this is aimed primarily at safety considerations, and not at
comfort. So I don't see this dramatically making airlines more pleasant to fly
on.

What I found most astonishing in the article was the baseline for evacuation:

> Current FAA rules require airlines to evacuate in 90 seconds or less.

Is this even vaguely realistic? Aside from blowing a hole in the side of the
plane at every row, this seems completely infeasible.

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txcwpalpha
Here is a video of an A380 evacuation test. 873 people evacuated from a plane
in 79 seconds. Of course, this relies a lot on your passengers not all trying
to bring their luggage with them like a bunch of morons (which unfortunately
does happen).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH4xWLPBUCs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH4xWLPBUCs)

~~~
dingaling
Everyone participating in those tests knows what's happening and how to do it.
The only variable they don't know is which exits will be blocked. It's like
doing UX testing with the project team and giving it a pass.

And it's not 'moronic' to want to take money, ID, medicines and valuables in
an emergency in a foreign country. The airline certainly isn't going to help
afterwards beyond paying the pitiful per-bag compensation.

~~~
txcwpalpha
>Everyone participating in those tests knows what's happening and how to do
it. The only variable they don't know is which exits will be blocked. It's
like doing UX testing with the project team and giving it a pass.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. People chosen for these
tests are chosen from a random sample of the public, including people of all
ages, athleticism, knowledge of airplanes, etc. They are only told that that
will be participating in a plane evacuation test and will need to go down a
slide. Other than that, they are only given the same safety briefing that
_every passenger on every commercial flight_ gets. Airline employees or those
with pre-knowledge of the evacuation procedures are expressly forbidden from
participating in the test. It's not like these are some "evacuation experts".

The test also has other stipulations, such as requiring some passengers to
carry dolls to simulate carrying children, at least _half_ of the emergency
exits are blocked off, all lights are turned off, and various
pillows/bags/debris is spread across the airplane aisles to simulate
conditions in a crash.

>And it's not 'moronic' to want to take money, ID, medicines and valuables in
an emergency in a foreign country. The airline certainly isn't going to help
afterwards beyond paying the pitiful per-bag compensation.

You're in a life-or-death situation where the options are to try to grab your
bag with your certainly replaceable money, ID, and medicines, possibly killing
yourself and/or others in the process, or leave them behind? Yes, it is
absolutely moronic to even attempt to take them.

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tyingq
Spirit's seat pitch on their A320's is 28 inches. From polling people I know,
anyone around 6'2" or more flat out can't fit their legs in without "man
spreading" into their neighbor's seat.

Compare Southwest, also a relatively low cost carrier, at 31 inches of seat
pitch.

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rayiner
Spirit is a lot cheaper than Southwest.

~~~
tyingq
Depends. Certainly if you don't bring a carry-on ($35) or any checked baggage
($30). And don't print your boarding pass at the airport, either ($10). The
bag charges go up $10 each as well if you don't do that from home. Prices are
all each way, so assuming a carry-on and one checked bag, Spirit has to be
$130 "cheaper" to be the same cost for a round-trip.

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spectrum1234
Poor people will now pay more for airlines tickets.

The safest concerns of this are hilarious. Planes are already the safest
transit by a wide margin.

This is similar to the congressman who wanted a law to make 1 checked bag
free. Yes, make the most price sensitive people force to subsidize this cost.
They are no longer rewarded with cheaper flights. (This cost has to go
somewhere so all ticket prices would go up.)

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rayiner
This is the worst sort if market regulation. It’s based on the fantasy that
you can legislate markets to be better, rather than just different. Here, the
market has chosen cost over comfort. All the legislature is doing is replacing
peoples’ revealed preferences with their own.

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jonknee
Almost everything on a plane is regulated (for good reason!), I think we'll
survive.

~~~
tptacek
It used to be that the fares themselves were regulated. It's only relatively
recently that a market for fares has existed at all. Guess what deregulation
of fares did for consumers?

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mythrwy
Well that's one way to get attention to important issues, have a few
congresspeople get personally inconvenienced by it. It seems like a lot of
tall people get elected so even better in this case.

Now, if we could just get them to pay for college and healthcare (like normal
Americans) at this stage of their careers we might really get somewhere!

